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

[RitsukoSonoda]

Leaving aside any technical discussion about whether they can put the lid on the box even if they want to:

The hit would be massive, but survivable. Anyone saying it would be insignificant literally just hasn't been paying attention; anyone saying it would be fatal is drawing wrong conclusions from bad data.

Some fairly conservative estimates of how many people are using tools and what percentage would quit quickly sum up to wiping out two entire NA servers worth of endgame population - a number pushing up against 8 digits of annual revenue. This is the kind of number that draws immediate and overwhelming attention from the C-suite, and absolutely the kind of number that ends careers. However, it's also not that big of a number weighed against the totality of the playerbase and revenue generated. Even more generous estimates don't come close to the existentially-dangerous level for the entire game, though they would most certainly come with an increasing amount of heads rolling.

One of the most fundamental problems here is that if you tacitly allow a greater deal of personal expression in how people see their characters, you have a very large problem on your hands if you want to take that back. People get attached to their characters and their perception of those characters, and they are nearly never willing to 'hand it back'. This is one thing that I think the more conservative estimates miss - sure, for gameplay tool users, you probably won't see that high of an attrition rate. But visual modders? You'd lose so, so many of them, and you'll never get them back.

If it needed to be solved, the time to solve it was 4 years ago. It's far, far too late now.

Hmm.. part of that honestly I'd say hedges on how the mods work. Again despite playing this title since before 1.0 during closed betas I have never bothered modding or using 3rd party tools in this game. However modding offline single player games has shown multiple instances of having to manually reinstall or update the mods themselves after the game itself has a patch or update which can be quite annoying and cumbersome in situations where mods are reliant on other mods to function. So far it's sounding like Dawntrail will create this scenario with FFXIV mods and should SE choose to put the lid on the box at that time, a fair amount of the visual modders might just shrug their shoulders and say "oh well" simply because it's less for them to do.

[DixieBellOCE]

Leaving aside any technical discussion about whether they can put the lid on the box even if they want to:

The hit would be massive, but survivable. Anyone saying it would be insignificant literally just hasn't been paying attention; anyone saying it would be fatal is drawing wrong conclusions from bad data.

Some fairly conservative estimates of how many people are using tools and what percentage would quit quickly sum up to wiping out two entire NA servers worth of endgame population - a number pushing up against 8 digits of annual revenue. This is the kind of number that draws immediate and overwhelming attention from the C-suite, and absolutely the kind of number that ends careers. However, it's also not that big of a number weighed against the totality of the playerbase and revenue generated. Even more generous estimates don't come close to the existentially-dangerous level for the entire game, though they would most certainly come with an increasing amount of heads rolling.

One of the most fundamental problems here is that if you tacitly allow a greater deal of personal expression in how people see their characters, you have a very large problem on your hands if you want to take that back. People get attached to their characters and their perception of those characters, and they are nearly never willing to 'hand it back'. This is one thing that I think the more conservative estimates miss - sure, for gameplay tool users, you probably won't see that high of an attrition rate. But visual modders? You'd lose so, so many of them, and you'll never get them back.

If it needed to be solved, the time to solve it was 4 years ago. It's far, far too late now.

The simplest experiment to run on this is just pay attention on the release of a new expansion or raid patch.

Most of the casual raiders won't even raid until all their mods are up to date, and most of the role players don't even log in for the first few days since they cant play IMVU with all their mods broken by the patch.
It's hilarious seeing people rely so heavily on mods, and them crumble without them. If mods were removed, these people would 100% just dip from the game for good.

[AlexiaD]

The simplest experiment to run on this is just pay attention on the release of a new expansion or raid patch.

Most of the casual raiders won't even raid until all their mods are up to date, and most of the role players don't even log in for the first few days since they cant play IMVU with all their mods broken by the patch.
It's hilarious seeing people rely so heavily on mods, and them crumble without them. If mods were removed, these people would 100% just dip from the game for good.

Then perhaps if they would dip, it's because the game needs it and/or they'd rather just leave and go somewhere else where mods and plugins are allowed.

Also it's on SE to make the characters look better so they dont have to mod, not everyone wants to look completely flat while playing a female character, a bit of curves aint gonna kill nobody, and no, the "graphical update" aka shaders and flower pots galore all over the place is not doing anything to help with that. Let's not even talk about how terrible the in game gear looks, thank god the mog shop saves it a little, but you have to shell the money for it.

[Ivtrix]

Wouldn’t kill the game overnight but there would be a noticeable drop of players across all levels of the community if all ingame m*ds were banned overnight. Whether or not you wanna classify that as dead or not is up to you.

Some people really live in a bubble oblivious to how many people m*d this game

[Wilford111]

I wish it wouldn't violate TOS to prove just how wrong you are.

You're the wrong one but okay.

[AlexiaD]

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.

this you?

Or it's the perfect time to do it because consoles can't mod, and with 14 finally coming to Xbox the only hit would be the PC players so they could do it figuring the new influx of Xbox would off set what they lose on PC. While people may leave the big question is where would they go? Most people who leave because of that would end up coming back at the moment because there's no real competition for FFXIV. WoW competes among the raiders crowd their raids and mythic + is good but lack of housing kills it when comparing rp/glamour community. So really until Ashes of creation, or riots new MMO comes out I don't think ff14 has much to stress if they want to ban them or not. Though even if they were I doubt they would do it before 7.1, if they ban it before or right on 7.0 they risk the sales for the next expansion. Because in the end they are a company and want to maximize profits. now if they did move to ban mods, I would think they would be as a company trying to find a way to only scan once you enter a dungeon, raid or PVP. I don't work on anticheat I don't know if it's possible but they're going to put an one in I figure it would be something like that

I almost want it to happen just to see yall when limsa gets emptied by 50% of people or more, because most of those people are in limsa, venues and some also do raid, but a lot of them are hanging out in cities, remove them and watch what happens.

Also lol @ Xbox, since FFXIV came out people had the time to buy either a working console for it, or to buy a PC. Stop lying to yourself thinking there will be a giant influx of players.

[Mcg55ss]

Leaving aside any technical discussion about whether they can put the lid on the box even if they want to:

The hit would be massive, but survivable. Anyone saying it would be insignificant literally just hasn't been paying attention; anyone saying it would be fatal is drawing wrong conclusions from bad data.

Some fairly conservative estimates of how many people are using tools and what percentage would quit quickly sum up to wiping out two entire NA servers worth of endgame population - a number pushing up against 8 digits of annual revenue. This is the kind of number that draws immediate and overwhelming attention from the C-suite, and absolutely the kind of number that ends careers. However, it's also not that big of a number weighed against the totality of the playerbase and revenue generated. Even more generous estimates don't come close to the existentially-dangerous level for the entire game, though they would most certainly come with an increasing amount of heads rolling.

One of the most fundamental problems here is that if you tacitly allow a greater deal of personal expression in how people see their characters, you have a very large problem on your hands if you want to take that back. People get attached to their characters and their perception of those characters, and they are nearly never willing to 'hand it back'. This is one thing that I think the more conservative estimates miss - sure, for gameplay tool users, you probably won't see that high of an attrition rate. But visual modders? You'd lose so, so many of them, and you'll never get them back.

If it needed to be solved, the time to solve it was 4 years ago. It's far, far too late now.

Or it's the perfect time to do it because consoles can't mod, and with 14 finally coming to Xbox the only hit would be the PC players so they could do it figuring the new influx of Xbox would off set what they lose on PC. While people may leave the big question is where would they go? Most people who leave because of that would end up coming back at the moment because there's no real competition for FFXIV. WoW competes among the raiders crowd their raids and mythic + is good but lack of housing kills it when comparing rp/glamour community. So really until Ashes of creation, or riots new MMO comes out I don't think ff14 has much to stress if they want to ban them or not. Though even if they were I doubt they would do it before 7.1, if they ban it before or right on 7.0 they risk the sales for the next expansion. Because in the end they are a company and want to maximize profits. now if they did move to ban mods, I would think they would be as a company trying to find a way to only scan once you enter a dungeon, raid or PVP. I don't work on anticheat I don't know if it's possible but they're going to put an one in I figure it would be something like that

[Absurdity]

While people may leave the big question is where would they go? Most people who leave because of that would end up coming back at the moment because there's no real competition for FFXIV.

No real competition is debatable, there is absolutely competition or even a superior option out there depending on what your focus is.

For raiders it's rather simple, they'll just go back to WoW, they're probably raiding in both games already anyway.

For the people sitting in Limsa all day on the other hand there are always other options because what you seem to miss is that these people aren't playing XIV for it's amazing (lmao) gameplay or strong (lmao²) mmo elements.
They would just go to a different game that is essentially an online chat room with decent graphics and visual customization, because that's essentially all they're engaging with anyway.

If it needed to be solved, the time to solve it was 4 years ago. It's far, far too late now.

Especially since that side of the game has really only exploded in Shadowbringers.

[Theodric]

You're the wrong one but okay.

He's not. Anyone can go to Twitter and search the FFXIV tag there to see how a significant number of players openly make use of heavy modding...and that's just the players who don't show any tact or subtlety. If you dig deeper, you'll find that there's also people making money through selling mods to other players.

Over time, the game's demographics have shifted to accommodate such players. It's very likely why a lot of glamour and furniture for houses is now 'venue bait'. As well as features such as gpose being implemented as 'content'. The development team aren't oblivious to what is going on behind closed doors.

[Ivtrix]

He's not. Anyone can go to Twitter and search the FFXIV tag there to see how a significant number of players openly make use of heavy modding...and that's just the players who don't show any tact or subtlety. If you dig deeper, you'll find that there's also people making money through selling mods to other players.

Over time, the game's demographics have shifted to accommodate such players. It's very likely why a lot of glamour and furniture for houses is now 'venue bait'. As well as features such as gpose being implemented as 'content'. The development team aren't oblivious to what is going on behind closed doors.

According to a friend balmung quicksands has 3 synchshells, and they’re all full.