At this point will FFXIV collapse if all mods and third party tools disappear?

[AnnRam]

Plug-ins and addons are fine they are QOL stuff that's mostly client side.

But changing models / clothing /rework entire races / poses or adding functions that are impossible to do for normal players shouldn't be allowed.

[Darkobra]

Probably not.

There we go. That's the answer.

Next doom and gloom thread!

[Reap00]

What kind of people are playing the game long-term?

How many people use ReShade? How many people use mods? We can now say that a significant portion of this game's playerbase are only here because of the mods, which allow them to fix the game's issues, like Viera hats, or for more, shall we say, mature activities. And what about more advanced mods that synchronize your modded appearance? Or poses that depict characters in... suggestive poses with others?

What about raiders? What even drives people to do reclear after reclear once they get BiS? FFLogs and going for high percentiles. And most of the game's clunky systems and opaque mechanics like the damage formula could not have been figured out without the aid of third party tools. The openers and rotations that you copied from the Balance are partially the product of ToS-violating third party tools.

Even many non-raiders depend on ToS-violating third party tools to fix this game's atrocious systems, such as being able to double-weave without clipping, or to be able to block out a persistent stalker completely from the screen.

Even third party tools that are not ToS-violating:

Crafters and gatherers depend on having Teamcraft and simulators to create rotations and macros + set up crafting lists, then share their macros through Discord.

BA and DRS depend on Discord to coordinate runs. Even Savage and Ultimate depend a lot on Discord especially if you want to get an early clear.

Achievement hunters compete on leaderboards like lalachievements.

I ask you: If all these fixes and features that the community developed disappear, with not one iota of help from the game developers, will the game even survive? To who do we owe our gratitude really? The community creators or the actual devs?

I think I owe my gratitude to these absolutely terrible troll posts you manage to pump out day in and day out. If you focused your creative efforts in something lucrative you may find it actually bears fruit.

[Supersnow845]

I think I owe my gratitude to these absolutely terrible troll posts you manage to pump out day in and day out. If you focused your creative efforts in something lucrative you may find it actually bears fruit.

I’m sure these people would actually prefer to be playing 14 but there is no content

Seriously the fandom is in full on doom posting mode and DT is a year away at a minimum

[WickedSensei]

I've been playing since 1.0 and I've never used a single mod, not even a macro.

I don't do discord either. I've capped all battle jobs and can pretty much figure out the rotations reading tooltips and some hours practice on a dummy.

I've never really been into cosmetic add-ons either as the game looks fine as is to me, although looking forward to the graphics update.

However I don't do savage or higher level content but I think most players of the game are in my space of "casual to mid-core" gamers.

So I really think the game will do just fine without all the extras mentioned in the OP.

Only maybe the hardcore gamers would suffer without....but then again if hardcore gamers are always looking for "add-ons" to make the game easier are they really "hardcore" ?

[MintnHoney]

if hardcore gamers are always looking for "add-ons" to make the game easier are they really "hardcore" ?

I would say that it's because they're so hardcore that they end up looking for add-ons that make things more comfortable for them.
A true casual wouldn't give a damn, because what do they care if they can't see or do something that they should probably see? They'll hopefully do or see it anyway, eventually.

[Xlantaa]

I don't think so. People who use mods is a very small percentage of player base despite what people in this forums says. Even the people who uses it will shrug and continue playing without them. You also should count the people who plays on consoles, which cannot use mods even if they want. I would say only very small mount will actually quit if they can't mod.

[Minifie]

I’m sure these people would actually prefer to be playing 14 but there is no content

Seriously the fandom is in full on doom posting mode and DT is a year away at a minimum

15 or so (maybe less depending on multiple accounts) are doomposting on a singular community (these forums). Other places rightfully do have critical components to the game, but I haven't found a doomposting community yet: Maybe they exist in small bubbles, or smaller discord servers and the like, but EW hasn't been some monumental failure: The Relic weapon situation is bland but acceptable if it isn't a standard-affair for all future relics (though more ways to grind materials in the grindy phase is a welcome change if kept). A lack of an exploration zone would be worth doomposting but we had 2/3 in the last 3 expansions: If Dawntrail fails to deliver one then it's worth concern (there was no DD in Shb nor a second ultimate, savage was also long in the tooth for eden's verse where DSR-ult would have been dropped).

At this point it seems similar to MoP doomposting: The game was still very good, but had changed up a lot of things that weren't necessarily palatable to the main audience of WoW. WoD, on the other hand, was a dumpster fire. I'll join the Doomposters if DT shits the bed, and yes, although I am not a fan of exploration zones, the fact people enjoy them means I hope they arent' retired or neglected, but I would also be okay if they were also produced "when the devs can produce a good one" and not just cyclical to expansions either. EW has been pretty good, but it has some blatant misses (damn if CC isn't DoA with ranked not degrading, isle sanctuary is very rudimentary and lacking in the one thing that would have made it sublime content: Instanced island housing proper), and no open world zone for those who like that. The raids have been good, ultimates have been awesome, I like EO minus the first 20 floors being glacial in pace and the story has been fine. If this is the "worst case" scenario for an xpac >I< am at least satisfied with it.

Some of the class changes, though, have been between atrocious and "decent". Why did smn lose so much gameplay identity to get VISUALLY upgraded (the egi summons are pretty baller, shame about half the rest of the kit) but play worse than dnc? Why did NIN have that awful raiju movement glued on? MCH was trash for half an xpac and only now plays pretty okay. Meanwhile BLM is just flat out better, SCH has been more enjoyable with the shield and pet fixes, PLD is engaging but still not that ShB glory.

At the end of the day, EW just does what it needs to. I'm not unhappy/doomer about it, content that the good is still solid but the bad is a bit more niggling. For the sake of the Exp. zone enjoyers I hope a good one lands in DT; it's not my cup of tea but not all content needs to be.

[SaberMaxwell]

I can't think of any rp venues that will exclude you in any way if you're not using mods, especially since all of them are client side. Can't think of any bartender that'll go "ohp laddie yeh ain't got no mare, getcher smart tuckus outta here." As far as paying for mods, yeah some do and its weird. $1,000 in mods though...feels like at that point the person was a whale already, and if they didn't spend it on XIV mods they'd have dumped it on a gacha. Either way, not my cash so I won't judge.

As for raiding plugins, none are needed except ACT. Noclippy is extremely nice for people not parked on the server though, since SE is stubborn about how animations work. Clearly the smartest way to handle ping is to run the animation lock twice, once when client says and once when server says, that won't cause issues for people with >40ms ping! "Fixing this is impossible." -SE.

I don't think the game would die. I think it would choke and sputter out of the big 5, perhaps, especially when not during patch week because a lot of people would vanish between story patches. Square would probably put XIV on maintenance mode eventually after that point, or push the devs to return to a 3 month patch cycle as they see the money printer run out of ink. General player anger at getting locked behind "Soon:tm:" would grow immensely since SE would be directly taking responsible for any and all qol.

[Supersnow845]

snip

The problem is repeatable content

Say you are a person who started any earlier than mid ShB so barring any very out of left field “I don’t start ShB till I have every eureka relic” this group has totally caught up on the MSQ, the MSQ aside (eden, coils, ShB job story etc) and has probably dabbled in most casual content to an extent (eureka, Bozja, fishing, ishgard restoration)

For this group of players (which also includes anyone who started later and plays more than 2 hours a day) what repeatable content did EW offer that encourages them to log on more than 2 days after the patch, criterion/variant died on release due to a lack of reward structure and variant is basically just another dungeon with a fake illusion of choice, EO is Just a third reskin of POTD with nothing unique and unlike the other 2 is very new person unfriendly due to how overscaled 1-30 is, island sanctuary automates itself and even before that is basically vanilla gathering for people who never levelled the gatherers. Hell they even integrated the trial story into the MSQ so we don’t get a sorrow of werlyt style story this expansion

What are these players who genuinely want to play supposed to do in EW, as a legacy player this has been the worst content drought since legacy itself and that is a very very low bar to clear considering legacy didn’t have any content