Third-party Tools Can Negatively Affect Players Not Using Them

[ZiraZ]

Imagine doing mentor roulette and withdrawing because you know its gonna be an old level synced Ex lmao just another reason to take that achievement and the people who already got the title/mount less seriously.

This is yet again another case of SE causing the problem by putting a unique mount as the reward.
At the end of the day no mentor owes anyone anything, and cheats or not they are gonna leave the duties they don't want to do anyways.
I learned quick to insta leave any SOSEX mentors because it's simply not doable with fresh sprouts in a single lockout, I'm just not wasting my time, I tried a few times but I have a limit.
Also in the entirety of the time spent getting the 2k achiv I never felt like people were leaving the queue at alarming or suspicious rates, so as far as I experienced this was never an issue on my region, mentors would leave AFTER they loaded in and realized it was gonna be a shitshow.

[Hyperia]

Using Blunderville as an example, I am under no illusion that I will ever win the final round, none whatsoever...

I have seen the videos and the lengths that people will go to to get the 100 wins title before Dec 31, 2023.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Serious question, does anyone take any titles seriously? I don't think I've had titles turned on in years.

The only titles that legit scares me are mahjong, some gold saucers, 20k accursed hoards, treasure dungeons, some PvP titles, and FSH titles.

[Absurdity]

The only titles that legit scares me are mahjong, some gold saucers, 20k accursed hoards, treasure dungeons, some PvP titles, and FSH titles.

Thief maps especially are just going to drive you insane. Have fun reaching the end of a dungeon 20 times where every floor has a 66% chance of kicking you out.

[Themarvin]

SE should just not generate any data for output, and lock that entirely away... then those third party programs got nothing to read from and the only viable option is if you can beat the dummies set out for it to see if enough damage can be achieved.

It would be welcomed and mostly due to that what we see above and the problem is going to be bigger, when the XBOX crowd comes around.

Fair and square lock it all away, however if FFXIV becomes all Cloud Gaming, then the problem would solve itself, and then we we will have pages of so called "elite" people claiming the game is to hard for them to do.

You don't need the data from those logs and whatever whenever it get to it, other than not trusting one and another, it is a typical western and especially NA thing.

[Caseal]

SE should just not generate any data for output, and lock that entirely away... then those third party programs got nothing to read from and the only viable option is if you can beat the dummies set out for it to see if enough damage can be achieved.

It would be welcomed and mostly due to that what we see above and the problem is going to be bigger, when the XBOX crowd comes around.

Fair and square lock it all away, however if FFXIV becomes all Cloud Gaming, then the problem would solve itself, and then we we will have pages of so called "elite" people claiming the game is to hard for them to do.

You don't need the data from those logs and whatever whenever it get to it, other than not trusting one and another, it is a typical western and especially NA thing.

that's the funny thing, act doesn't read data that is outputted normally, it forcefully extracts data from network packets
if sqex were to hide combat logs it would not hinder act in any way

[VerdeLuck]

SE should just not generate any data for output, and lock that entirely away... then those third party programs got nothing to read from and the only viable option is if you can beat the dummies set out for it to see if enough damage can be achieved.

It would be welcomed and mostly due to that what we see above and the problem is going to be bigger, when the XBOX crowd comes around.

Fair and square lock it all away, however if FFXIV becomes all Cloud Gaming, then the problem would solve itself, and then we we will have pages of so called "elite" people claiming the game is to hard for them to do.

You don't need the data from those logs and whatever whenever it get to it, other than not trusting one and another, it is a typical western and especially NA thing.

They could break ACT, AM, XIVAlexander, and a few other plugins if they just encrypted game packets, and they could probably stop players from datamining the game if they uppped the security of the installation files, but they seem to be not interested at all in doing this.

[ForteNightshade]

They could break ACT, AM, XIVAlexander, and a few other plugins if they just encrypted game packets, and they could probably stop players from datamining the game if they uppped the security of the installation files, but they seem to be not interested at all in doing this.

Getting around encrypted game packets wouldn't be difficult. The only surefire way they'd ever be able to "break" any of those programs is with a dedicated anti-cheat software that was routinely updated. Which they'll never do for the simple fact it wouldn't be worthwhile financially. Third party programs have become so ubiquitous nowadays, SE would lose substantially more than they'd ever gain attempting to break them. For example sake, losing say 100k would cost them over 16M annually despite that only being probably around 10% of the overall playerbase. That's an insane amount of money to lose for essentially nothing. There's no benefit beyond saying "our game is now 100% pure". Breaking third party won't get them new subscriptions to make up those losses. In fact, 100k is a very low estimation considering the disastrous impact losing third party would have on the raid and roleplay scenes, two of the largest side activities in the game.

Put simply, they aren't interested because there's zero for them to care when they can have the best of both worlds.

[Thurmnmurmn]

Imagine doing mentor roulette and withdrawing because you know its gonna be an old level synced Ex lmao just another reason to take that achievement and the people who already got the title/mount less seriously.

By your logic you should apply this kind of thinking to everyone in the game. There's bad apples in every aspect of the game so clearly you just shouldn't take anyone seriously.

You don't notice good mentors because most the time they do their job and that's it. Only on very rare occasions do you actually have to do any actual mentoring while doing the mentor roulette. However it's super easy to remember a bad mentor or mentors leaving. Heck a ton of people even assume someone leaving is a mentor without ever actually even knowing.

And you can just say the mount. No one is actually using those lame mentor titles XD
Mentor of Mentors is just asking to get made fun of.

This is yet again another case of SE causing the problem by putting a unique mount as the reward.
At the end of the day no mentor owes anyone anything, and cheats or not they are gonna leave the duties they don't want to do anyways.
I learned quick to insta leave any SOSEX mentors because it's simply not doable with fresh sprouts in a single lockout, I'm just not wasting my time, I tried a few times but I have a limit.
Also in the entirety of the time spent getting the 2k achiv I never felt like people were leaving the queue at alarming or suspicious rates, so as far as I experienced this was never an issue on my region, mentors would leave AFTER they loaded in and realized it was gonna be a shitshow.

Agreed. It really didn't happen all that often.

The only titles that legit scares me are mahjong, some gold saucers, 20k accursed hoards, treasure dungeons, some PvP titles, and FSH titles.

Flexes with "Big Fish" or "High Roller"
Humble/not so humble

[Mosha]

Getting around encrypted game packets wouldn't be difficult. The only surefire way they'd ever be able to "break" any of those programs is with a dedicated anti-cheat software that was routinely updated. Which they'll never do for the simple fact it wouldn't be worthwhile financially. Third party programs have become so ubiquitous nowadays, SE would lose substantially more than they'd ever gain attempting to break them. For example sake, losing say 100k would cost them over 16M annually despite that only being probably around 10% of the overall playerbase. That's an insane amount of money to lose for essentially nothing. There's no benefit beyond saying "our game is now 100% pure". Breaking third party won't get them new subscriptions to make up those losses. In fact, 100k is a very low estimation considering the disastrous impact losing third party would have on the raid and roleplay scenes, two of the largest side activities in the game.

Put simply, they aren't interested because there's zero for them to care when they can have the best of both worlds.

Within the active player base, I would say it is a lot higher than 10% just walk around the Quicksands on Balmung and see how many plates have Mare in the bio. Just mare and we aren't talking about ACT or Dalamud as a whole, 3rd party-tools are ubiquitous at this point.