Twitch streamers still blatantly cheating on stream.

[drtasteyummy]

You know what, I'll come clean. I do use "visual mods", namely Nvidia Freestyle:

https://www.nvidia.de/geforce/geforc...eestyle-games/

This offers reshade-like post-process visual effects and is officially sanctioned by SE, by virtue of Nvidia having permission to enable it on the game. For me, it's mainly the "'clarity" slider which removes a lot of the fogging.

You could argue it offers gameplay advantages as it makes visuals clearer for me. Certain visual effects that might be meant to obscure my view don't "work as well". Sorry, not sorry, it is explicitly endorsed and supported.

How does this differ from the aesthetic mods I explicitly and specifically described not caring about?

Sure, manipulating ingame models or animations with tools such as Penumbra is against the ToS as stated here:

2.6 Hacking and Circumvention. You may not hack, disassemble, decompile, or otherwise modify the Game or server computer code, whether the Game code is located on a DVD, Blu-rayTM disc, your computer/console or on Square Enix's servers, except as expressly permitted by Square Enix or applicable law.

and here

2.7 Modifying or Creating Derivative Software. You may not modify or cause to be modified any files that are a part of the Game or Service in any way not expressly authorized by Square Enix, and may not make any derivative works of the Game.