Would you be opposed to SE implementing a program to scan for addons/parsers?

[Padudu]

This is true, I was simply attempting to approach this from the most diplomatic angle possible, I guess I was imagining ways of signal what you are doing without spelling it out, either by using coded language, or by communicating outside the game, as I scarcely use PF and usually try to find groups in Discord communities, but there is still a risk that you could avoid exposing yourself to entirely.

And I absolutely agree on the point about knowing their jobs, I just did a Leveling Roulette run with a NIN that had clearly macro'd Mudras and was taking so much damage I felt bad for the Healer, I'd rather have had someone who was botting their rotation compared to that...

The diplomatic way would just be.. never say anything about your plogon usage. There's literally 0 reason to even go out of your way to talk about it in the public manner, like at all. Like I said, in DF, in rouls, even in Discord, could you reliably say who is using plogons (given that it isn't immediately obvious). In Discord, it's a little easier to talk about it since SE doesn't go by outside evidence generally.

And yeah, plogons and bad players aren't mutually exclusive. You get all types in there and that's what makes it so hard to write off entirely lol. I'd rather have someone just have fun and be in a pleasant mood, than not. If 50 plogons is someone's way of having fun, you go right ahead, because I won't know and I won't care :P

[CelestiCer]

I love how you act like SE has a hardline stance on this and then go on to explain why they dont have a hardline stance. Also what is there to comment on in relation to Gshade? Yoship putting out a statement saying "told you so"?

What I love is the crucifixion of the Raiding scene. Like why do people stop there? Raiding Plugins make up barely 5% of the total available Third-party tools. To top it off? it's usually content that other players never touch, yet complain about others cheating or clearing. Just oppose everything.

Gshade/Reshade/Mare/Penumbra/Dalamud/XIValex/NoClippy/Anamnesis/Ktisis, make sure to include the 1000x+ teleporting Lalafell bots under each Aetheryte that truly has some effect on the game economy. The websites that provide every mod and plugin. Every Twitter page with body modified screenshots taken with Gshade or Reshade, SFW and NSFW content that is also being sold for money needs to be crucified equally as much. Every house that has floating furniture that can't be manually glitched there without BDTH. Why does the player-base and Square hyperfocus on just the Raiding tools why not everything else as well when it's often glaringly obvious? Because players and Square silently agree on something. That the tools are beneficial to enjoying the game, while Square not needing to use resources to develop them. They make sure to remind the people however it is not okey. And cheating isn't okey, yet somehow it's always Raiding tools and not everything else that's the main focus.

I'd like to see the player-base opposing everything equally, but that just is never going to happen.

[Kaurhz]

And cheating isn't okey, yet somehow it's always Raiding tools and not everything else that's the main focus.

I'd like to see the player-base opposing everything equally, but that just is never going to happen.

When something makes its way into the limelight, as it were, people tend to be inclined to jump on this regardless of what that might be.

When people first started advertising brothels etc., people were against it? and guess what? Many even used modding tools as weaponization for this. The bilboard? People were also focused on how this contained mods - Funny enough, there is even a Twitter account dedicated to going on a crusade against reporting and getting Twitter accounts banned that contain modded screenshots or poses.

When Ishgard Restoration rankings first started? People went on a mass crusade about botting, people botting in the community, and thus proceeded a crusade on/against botting, inc., false accusations for those whose only crime was having more spare time than anyone else?

Guess what? Even when they did the interior design competition (what felt like millennia ago) - Quite a few people were also up in arms about this for people that used mods, glitches, bugs etc., to design certain areas of the house.

Wanna know what'd happen if they tried Ishgard Restoration-esque content again with a competitive element? You'd see more botting complaint threads appear.

TL;DR spare me the indignation crusades about raiders being the only folk that gets this treatment.

[CelestiCer]

TL;DR spare me the indignation crusades about raiders being the only folk that get this treatment.

I'll give the same courtesy by quoting only a partial statement I guess...

Having started only since end SHB, As far as I can tell? every thing that's associated with cheating is more often being related with Combat Third-party-Tools. Creating this this prejudice that raiders on average by default abuse them. Even though there 20.000 online active Mare users, Millions of non Combat mods/plugins and files downloaded... and yet Square addresses mostly 1st World Raiders of which represents at best 0.01% of the Total player-base and a fraction of all raiders. Heck the 1000 Lalafell bots underneath the Aetherytes are treated with less malice by the community and Square then the Raiders... " who don't even use Third party tools ", let alone with.

Though I never said Raiders are the only once to get attention out of everyone. The way I meant my phrasing to be taken was " mostly ". But thank you for the history lesson. I'm sure they all got their just banned/suspensions/punishments including the Balmung Billboard players like the Ultimate players did who cheated.

TLDR: Usage of Third Party tools breaks Square's rules regardless of what type you use. Cheating = Cheating. And until I see Square themselves treat it as such equally across the board? I'll spare no indignation crusades/ opinions.

[Kaurhz]

I'll give the same courtesy by quoting only a partial statement I guess...

Having started only since end SHB, As far as I can tell? every thing that's associated with cheating is more often being related with Combat Third-party-Tools. Creating this this prejudice that raiders on average by default abuse them. Even though there 20.000 online active Mare users, Millions of non Combat mods/plugins and files downloaded... and yet Square addresses mostly 1st World Raiders of which represents at best 0.01% of the Total player-base and a fraction of all raiders. Heck the 1000 Lalafell bots underneath the Aetherytes are treated with less malice by the community and Square then the Raiders... " who don't even use Third party tools ", let alone with.

Though I never said Raiders are the only once to get attention out of everyone. The way I meant my phrasing to be taken was " mostly ". But thank you for the history lesson. I'm sure they all got their just banned/suspensions/punishments including the Balmung Billboard players like the Ultimate players did who cheated.

TLDR: Usage of Third Party tools breaks Square's rules regardless of what type you use. Cheating = Cheating. And until I see Square themselves treat it as such equally across the board? I'll spare no indignation crusades/ opinions.

Well, initially, this was the only part of your post that intrigued me enough to respond, and that excerpt felt like a pretty suitable summary of your post.

Then you should probably concern yourself with omitting parts of a 'statement' - That you can't wholly make one on, but enough being brash from me (not entirely warranted) - They get about the same amount of treatment as anyone else, whenever some drama elects to rear up. A lot of this attention is simply derived from how publicly viewed the World First Race has been, if other avenues of this game were to have such then it would be the exact same, realistically. People are tracking world races, but people are not so avidly looking at each and every person to see if their house has been designed using third-party tools, for example. Botting still appears, albeit a little more sporadically, but this also happens in much greater intensity, to where people understand that the presence of botting comes with the territory of certain games, especially MMOs. That being said, I will grant you a few points made in the post.

Regarding botting, this is a little more nuanced than simply nothing, or little being done (Granted, they are woefully underequipped to deal with it using a team the size of the STF) - To put it like this, can you validate that every single botter you see is the exact same botter as last night, for example? You can cut one-off, but 2 more shall take its place, quite comfortably. In a sense, the pace at which they deal with the bots is far slower than the pace at which they are being created. - I could scream at and ascribe malice to the bots all day and night long, but I am woefully aware that I am likely screaming at a programmed script, and not even an actual player.

Most cases I have heard of have been from people being silly enough to quite literally advertise themselves, and their character publicly whilst using such a tool, which in many instances is just irrefutable evidence, and at that point begging to sanctioned. Yes, sure, there are 20,000 users using Mare at any given time, but the number of people actually advertising this information publicly without some elusive way is also much slimmer.

Let me put it like this, people using any tool, publicly, and irrefutably connecting their character name to it, are more than likely to get banned, and it just so happens that some people are obtuse enough to actually advertise themselves doing it, directly, and to inarguably a very large audience at that, hence why it would seem like raiders are targeted, some just happen to be more obtuse than others when it comes to showing things that they really shouldn't be showing, under any circumstances, especially given the advice that has been given.

It comes entirely down to what you yourself show yourself doing, and how well this is connected to your character, and yes. Third-party is third-party, and cheating is cheating.

[Lium]

I'll give the same courtesy by quoting only a partial statement I guess...

Having started only since end SHB, As far as I can tell? every thing that's associated with cheating is more often being related with Combat Third-party-Tools. Creating this this prejudice that raiders on average by default abuse them. Even though there 20.000 online active Mare users, Millions of non Combat mods/plugins and files downloaded... and yet Square addresses mostly 1st World Raiders of which represents at best 0.01% of the Total player-base and a fraction of all raiders. Heck the 1000 Lalafell bots underneath the Aetherytes are treated with less malice by the community and Square then the Raiders... " who don't even use Third party tools ", let alone with.

Though I never said Raiders are the only once to get attention out of everyone. The way I meant my phrasing to be taken was " mostly ". But thank you for the history lesson. I'm sure they all got their just banned/suspensions/punishments including the Balmung Billboard players like the Ultimate players did who cheated.

TLDR: Usage of Third Party tools breaks Square's rules regardless of what type you use. Cheating = Cheating. And until I see Square themselves treat it as such equally across the board? I'll spare no indignation crusades/ opinions.

There is a big difference between aesthetic mods and gameplay mods.

[Heroman3003]

Why does the player-base and Square hyperfocus on just the Raiding tools why not everything else as well when it's often glaringly obvious? Because players and Square silently agree on something. That the tools are beneficial to enjoying the game, while Square not needing to use resources to develop them.

The bots are cared about and the bans happen constantly. It's just that there's not that much that can be done about them at this point beyond just purging them on the regular without chaging the game to the point where it may affect normal players' experience, such as adding additional personal info verifications on registration and such. Bot ban waves happen regularly and will keep happening regularly and everyone has accepted that its just a thing that goes that way. Reason the community and SE hyperfocus on raiding so much is because when the big progging race for any new content is on - all of community's attention is at those progging. So of course, seeing it done with cheats is a bad look for SE and for community. Reason raiding cheating is treated worse than the shader modding is because... It is worse. All modding is against TOS equally, but with cheating there is also active impact on the integrity of the game, which is why its treated worse. Everyone hates bots just as much for same reason, but its a topic thats been talked to death and ultimately issue thats as solved as it can be without some radical new approach with its own underwater stones to counterbalance.

Nobody will treat all mods as equal because they aren't equal. Community especially so. SE, in turn, rarely acts on it because their definition of 'credible proof of modding' is different from what most people think it is, and therefore just someone posting a screenshot of their modded game is not enough grounds for punishment, actually. With gameplay-affecting mods that give you impossible-normally advantages though? Its a lot more easy to verify than whether you have a mod that makes all catgirls have chests size of two Dalamuds.

[Midareyukki]

Its a lot more easy to verify than whether you have a mod that makes all catgirls have chests size of two Dalamuds.

It's also how these raiders get caught too. It's not them talking about it in public, it's not them admitting to using third party tools. It's the fact that they're either using ridiculously blatant tools that anyone and their grandmother can tell is a problem (speedhacks) or they're streaming those tools being used, like the TOP guys did.

A screenshot of your Miqo'te with entire shards for a bosom? There's no guarantee that the catgirl is the one modding her character. Someone might have mods and have taken a picture of her with them on. She isn't modding, someone else is, and they're doing it to her. Even if consensual. Which is why it's that hard to prove. Even if you have someone admit to using them, if there's no tangible proof that they truly are using them, then it's not a straightforward process.

However if you manage to capture their screen with them using modded assets, then yeah. That's a much more tangible proof.

...which is why for as much as clearing any Ultimate is a feat of its own that likely requires skill and knowledge of the game, the people who got caught are no geniuses if their immediate thought was to broadcast their use of third party tools so publicly.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

There is a big difference between aesthetic mods and gameplay mods.

If you're talking about "importing a dress from that other game to this game and using it on your character", sure, but if you're talking about housing plugins, crafting plugins or whatever, well...

Tbh I don't really see how. If you think gameplay plugins are "cheat" to have a good parse or a clear you shouldn't have, there also are some people that take pride (and even commission) housing designs or whatever, so they probably feel cheated by people using addons the same way "normal" raiders feel cheated by the people using pve addons.

My point is not that everyone should be banned, IDC what people do and what they use, my point is : you should take pride in what you do, however you do it, and stop comparing yourself to others. I take pride in my "vanilla" kills, and in my "vanilla" housing, and that's enough for me. More than "take pride in what you do", it includes "not caring about others parse" and "not caring that this other community is cheating too". Just focus on what you do, let SE handle bans or whatever they should do with cheaters, and chill.

[Padudu]

There is a big difference between aesthetic mods and gameplay mods.

The housing plugins are definitely not just aesthetic mods tho. The one that they're talking about genuinely lets you place housing items outside of the game limits, at least for the most part.