3rd Party Program might as well be legalized

[Seraphor]

And therein is the contradiction and reason people consider it a grey area. When lead game designer's regularly-voiced views contradict the game's rules and TOS. I am not advocating for use of any modifications, and am kinda against them, even purely graphics-related ones. But even I recognize and see where the root of confusion starts and why community ultimately feels like its a grey area. Yoshi-P isn't just some guy on dev team, he's the face of FF14's development, to the point where people hear his every word as absolute gospel.

They don't contradict the games rules. Opinions are opinions, and rules are rules.

There is a difference between a moral argument, and a very matter of fact litigious system.
Rules are rules, and moral philosophising is not something you can nail down.

There may be some confusion from translations, and maybe there's a cultural issue too, where the west have a tendency to conflate morality (right and wrong) with law (legal and illegal). These are entirely different things.

[Heroman3003]

They don't contradict the games rules. Opinions are opinions, and rules are rules.

There is a difference between a moral argument, and a very matter of fact litigious system.
Rules are rules, and moral philosophising is not something you can nail down.

There may be some confusion from translations, and maybe there's a cultural issue too, where the west have a tendency to conflate morality (right and wrong) with law (legal and illegal). These are entirely different things.

As I said, I'm not arguing for whether its grey or not, far as I see its really not. But the perception of it being grey is very prevalent on both sides of the aisle and its important to recognize and see WHY its seen that way if solution to the community's divide on the issue is ever to be found, though that in itself is doubtful.

[DPZ2]

and they have no intentions of putting anything like DRM into the game to know what's on your PC. In other words, they won't do anything to stop you so long as you aren't publicly calling people out.

They don't put DRM into the game to know what's on your PC because it's illegal in a number of countries where they have subscribers.

So, can't peek at your PC and the other half the playerbase can't use third-party tools. About the only thing they can do (and they don't report it to the general public) is ban players for activities tied to those tools. Of course, if the playerbase finds out because, well, it gets announced on social media by those banned, we suddenly get tons of extremely pious players invoking "grey area!" as an excuse.

If there truly wasn't one they would be actively trying to break every potential third party application the moment they were discovered.

And that is the straight and narrow path for a gaming company to go broke.

[BaconBits]

This modding vs anti-modding discourse is boring as sin.

[DixieBellOCE]

Title says it all. Latest Ultimate fiasco, we all know everyone uses it, it just so happens that the world first got caught. And considering the effort they pour into clearing, I still respect them.

But this?


The video

shorturl.at/gPS15

This is just pure laziness and against the spirit of actually playing the game. Crafters are one of the easiest job to level already. Doing this is just.. I don't know how to describe it anymore, and moreover doing it in the public where everyone, including new players, can see, send the wrong message. I reported by the way, once per day for nearly a week. She's still there. If this gives you more context, this is happening in Kujata

Just legalize it already, you're fighting a losing battle.

People have been using this since heavensward and square enix have done nothing to stop it.

I had a falling out with one of my old FC's on Tonberry because the FC leader would 24/7 autocraft in his locked FC room then brag about how rich he was.

Absolutely pathetic way to play the game, he was just botting.

[DixieBellOCE]

There's no way the TC isn't joking here... right?
Macro's aren't cheats or botting guys, macro's are literally in the game.

Either way, there may be several plugin features that should be in the game, but allowing all third party tools is absolutely a no from me.
The game is supposed to be equally playable between PC and console. PC can 'get away' with a lot of things that are just QoL improvements (should be in the game) or just cosmetic (technically not hurting anyone) but when it provides an advantage, it goes against the spirit of equal presentation between PC and console.

This isn't a macro, a macro lasts for 15 lines of text then stops.

What this person is using is a conjunction of macros and a crafting bot that selects the recipe and starts the macro after x seconds.
Its a well known 3rd party tool that's existed since heavensward, and 100% should be banned for using it as it is botting.

My old FC leader used this 24/7 and never got banned, and made billions of gil.
its disgusting that people can do this and not get punished.

[SieyaM]

ACT as I understand it's use here is mostly just a data aggregator. It is just taking data that is readily given to you through the battle log and putting it in a format that is useful for players, ACT does not need to do anything special to obtain this data, just read the battle log. Some of the add-ons used by the TOP team seem to be giving AOE markers for mechanics that are not supposed to have them and marking AOEs before the game itself does, giving them distinct advantages over how it was supposed to be experienced. And I understand his sentiment, if teams are going to keep finding ways to make this content easier then why bother continuing to spend time and effort designing it?

[Reinha]

People have been using this since heavensward and square enix have done nothing to stop it.

I had a falling out with one of my old FC's on Tonberry because the FC leader would 24/7 autocraft in his locked FC room then brag about how rich he was.

Absolutely pathetic way to play the game, he was just botting.

It's taken out the fun I had with crafting. They use a bot program to gather while they sleep, another program to craft while they work and probably another one to undercut every second during the evening prime time. There is no way for me to compete with that unless I started using bots myself. I made a couple of the new skirts to sell when the mats cost 1 million and after being auto-undercut for two weeks I was now selling for an 80% loss and just crashed the market to get rid of the items before it became a 100% loss.

And people will defend this because they get cheap items. I have no respect for the player base anymore because half of them are cheaters and the other half supports cheating, and yet they act holier than thou when it comes to things they dislike.

[RobynDaBank]

This isn't a macro, a macro lasts for 15 lines of text then stops.

What this person is using is a conjunction of macros and a crafting bot that selects the recipe and starts the macro after x seconds.
Its a well known 3rd party tool that's existed since heavensward, and 100% should be banned for using it as it is botting.

My old FC leader used this 24/7 and never got banned, and made billions of gil.
its disgusting that people can do this and not get punished.

Thank you for explaining. Haven't dabbled in crafting much so the most I knew about it was macros.

[Payadopa]

There's no way the TC isn't joking here... right?
Macro's aren't cheats or botting guys, macro's are literally in the game.

Either way, there may be several plugin features that should be in the game, but allowing all third party tools is absolutely a no from me.
The game is supposed to be equally playable between PC and console. PC can 'get away' with a lot of things that are just QoL improvements (should be in the game) or just cosmetic (technically not hurting anyone) but when it provides an advantage, it goes against the spirit of equal presentation between PC and console.

That's how I see it. But there is always someone pushing the envelope or making ridiculous statements like now we need to ban Discord.