Yup, Another Thread: I Hate Addons and SE Needs To Ban Players Who Use Them!

[Burmecia]

this story is missing information and doesn't really give us enough information.

As someone who (as ps player) used to raid savage with someone whose addon-bot-mod-whatever calls we all could hear blasting through his headset second before anything we could react to appeared... I don't know, my dudes, I'm occam's razor kind of gal, and though both explanations are simple:
1) the tank in op's story had some very good luck and dodged everything flawlessly 5 seconds earlier than any reaction demanding signs appeared
2) the tank in op's story had a little help, with tool which is very common and easily available - despite being in gray area
-- I know which seems more plausible to me, but I think I'm gonna keep that to myself.

[NekoMataMata]

As someone who (as ps player) used to raid savage with someone whose addon-bot-mod-whatever calls we all could hear blasting through his headset second before anything we could react to appeared... I don't know, my dudes, I'm occam's razor kind of gal, and though both explanations are simple:
1) the tank in op's story had some very good luck and dodged everything flawlessly 5 seconds earlier than any reaction demanding signs appeared
2) the tank in op's story had a little help, with tool which is very common and easily available - despite being in gray area
-- I know which seems more plausible to me, but I think I'm gonna keep that to myself.

Yeah, you conveniently missed the part where later in this thread the OP finally caved and told people the mechanic that roused their suspicions and people gave them multiple signs(including an obvious cast bar) that would explain the player in question's movements.

[Sindele]

The cool thing is that the tool you're talking about is also open source, so it's not terribly complicated to go verify for yourself just how nonsensical the claim is for the mechanic mentioned.

But also, in the situations where it allows for actual predestination: it's almost always because the encounter is spawning dummies and preparing casts too early. That said, I feel like there was a fuss about that a while back and SE acknowledged the need to improve on that front? I can't remember for certain.

[SaberMaxwell]

Gonna put a big heavy "You have no evidence of anything" on the OP. Every fight in the game is scripted to heck and back, and roulette content like Nier raids will be something players have most likely done often enough to accurately preposition for mechanics.

Even up to the Ultimate level, you can accurately preposition for most mechanics and predict where and how to move far ahead of time--this is, in fact, the metagame of jobs with a lot of cast bars. No tool is really needed.

Then lets turn around and ask why someone would bother cheating in roulette content like 24 mans in the first place. Especially outdated roulette content. There are no leaderboards to cheat your way up, and with 24 people, one's own increased contributions don't amount to enough to go out of your way to install a timeline or anything.

We all agree cheaters should be removed from the game. However calling any and everything out as cheating when your only evidence is partial anecdote is only going to dilute what people think cheating is and cause witch hunts, and witch hunters are imo worse than cheaters.

Tldr: man cheating must be super common in low end content if you have to make up your example.

[Denji]

this is going to be one of those threads where we later find out that it's a boss with all 3 permutations in their aoes and you can tell what the next one will be simply by whatever the last one was, isn't it. anyway in order for those plugins to work, they need to be able to predict by what the boss did last attack and the way they hook into the game and interpret the data is the same thing that you can do with your brain.

a big part of tanking is not just being a damage sponge, it's about moving into the correct spot and preventing the enemy/boss(es) from moving/spinning as much as you can. if you know what the next attack is by virtue of having run it before then it's something you should be doing and if you're a tank who doesn't then you're just a bad tank.

ffxiv fights are pretty consistent and it's why we used to joke back in that fights (compared to other MMOs) are just group/interpretive dance. each fight is based around the "right spot" and the "wrong spot", safe zone and not safe zone. your position is a lot more important in this game (or rather, was, in the context of this reference--) than others.

now i'm not saying plugins aren't at fault here -- it's possible, yes. but i also have serious doubts because fights... just aren't random in this game. it's easy to tell what variation you get just from the first few attacks, if even that. i can't think of any fight that is truly random.

if your first thought is "oh the game client knows the next attack but it doesn't tell you until later" then all i can say is you don't know how the client works and how data is sent and received. that simply doesn't happen. ffxiv sends very very little data to the clients and expects even less back; i'm talking minuscule amounts of data because it has to serve (see: it's a server) loads of data very quickly to everyone with inconsistent connection speeds. in fact it's so little that the server gives you some leeway just to be sure you actually got out of that aoe or finished casting before moving (which is how slidecasting works).

tangent aside/tl;dr: the client knows and displays what's going to happen next as soon as it gets the data because people -would- cheat if it did anything else AND they want to minimize bandwidth and processing usage. it's unlikely they were using a plugin but it also isn't outside the realm of possibility however moving 5-6 seconds in advance by somehow interpreting data before the client received it isn't possible because that isn't how this game works. true randomless in a fight would only be possible if it sent that data in advance, which the server doesn't do.

[Sebazy]

Serial-jointed Command Model: Energy Assualt.
Please tell me how you determine the "tell" of which player this aoe targets to allow the cheater to move 5+ seconds ahead of time away from them before anyone else knows who the target is? Please tell me how! I want to know this "tell" you claim to know regarding this specific mechanic I observed!

Farm it repeatedly. Whilst the direction it turns may be 'random' (Aka generally facing into the dogile behind), the sequence absolutely isn't.

Could they have been using a timeline? Sure why not. But could they also have been trying to farm it for a specific piece of gear and were on the umpteenth run of the day, thus knew the mechanic was coming by references such as where they were in their rotation? Also very likely.

It's how 24 mans are.

[Saraide]

I find it very funny how people are dunking on op but I gotta ask one thing. Who remembers the order of mechanics in alliance raids?? Naturally I dont give a damn if people cheat in pve but I am wondering.

[ChrysOCE]

I find it very funny how people are dunking on op but I gotta ask one thing. Who remembers the order of mechanics in alliance raids?? Naturally I dont give a damn if people cheat in pve but I am wondering.

I can't tell you off the top of my head the order of mechanics, but if I see a cast bar or a specific movement, I will know what to do, I've done them enough.

[PercibelTheren]

I find it very funny how people are dunking on op but I gotta ask one thing. Who remembers the order of mechanics in alliance raids?? Naturally I dont give a damn if people cheat in pve but I am wondering.

It's not out of the realm of possibility. If I do a fight enough times, I remember the timeline. I could do all CT raids in my sleep. I'm pretty sure farming the other ally raids enough times can lead to some people knowing what's next. Then you get players like those black mages who don't move a pixel more than they need to because they've just learned the fight.

[SophiaDL]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w_Pll7GDVgI