Third-party Tools Can Negatively Affect Players Not Using Them

[LianaThorne]

Almost guaranteed none of you would even quit the game lol. What are you gonna do play second life? I get that you want the mods to stay, but it's a funny idea to think you'd actually quit it over cosmetic mods being removed. Maybe 1-3% of mare users would quit if it was removed from the game. Real RP is based on imagination anyway.

If I was used to my character looking a certain way for years and then that was suddenly gone, I would. I think others would as well.

You also seem very out of touch with how the social life and roleplay scene in this game works if you think it's based on imagination. XD

[redheadturk]

They cannot ban one without the other, especially since the Mare and Texture Modders have gotten more brazen with charging RM for mods. Either do all or none.

Yes, they can. Ban those who are obviously cheating. Most texture modders are quiet in game unless with friends they can trust, in which case they will ask "Do you mare?" and if they say no it gets dropped. Cheaters end up being obvious enough with it that they can be pretty easily caught and banned.

[strawberrycake]

I think the funniest thing about all this is that this type of conversation only ever looks at groups of people that follow meta/what high end guilds who want to clear as quick as possible do, and people who choose to play with addons who see them as a means of pruning players who will waste time. I've cleared a decent amount of content in XIV and WoW and addons were not really used, we just learn the mechanics. And a lot of the people I've met top end in both games didn't use a mariad of addons and tools.

When i play in XIV and talk to anyone I raid with, I rarely here more then people using ACT, why because it's a great tools to parse ones own growth and to see what could be done better. And when you take away all the outrage about ACT, it's just a raw data converter so you can see if you're missing some dps, or could heal better, or could mit better. It just takes away a lot of hoping someone is willing to admit their short comings. Anything beyond that is stuff like XIV alexander to eliminate ping, which is fair, XIV servers are NOT that great lol.

In WoW, I raid up to Heroic and occasionally Mythic. Funfact, Most people only use Elv UI and Details. I use a weak aura to track my frenzy stacks on hunter, and thats only because it's not something thats easy to track with the vanilla UI. A lot of Weak aura usage in my groups are usually for forgetful raiders, or people with handicaps, which is dope because I get to raid with friends who otherwise wouldn't raid. I won't deny that people in WoW make a huge stink, but it is NOT hard to find groups that raid for fun and aren't copying what they're told word for or copying what they see on Twitch from Method and Liquid. It just requires digging past the first couple of guilds you see recruiting, which is what I did and I've been with mine for like 5 years now. Plenty of guilds who do not care for it.

Over 10+ in WoW and just about 10 in XIV. And out here in the mid-core-ish area of both and addons are not as wide spread as people wanna make them out to be. It's just ease of access, ease of use, and creating accessibility where the devs do not or do a poor job of trying.

Are there people who abuse them? Yeah. Are there people who swear by them? Of Course. But that's just how people are, to genralize isn't great, to deny how they help isn't great. Like Pain killers are dope af when you break your leg, but to say everyone is wrong for using them and are gonna get addicted is a bit heavy and a stretch. It is fully up to the person/people to find what suits them and or make it if it's hard or doesn't exist. And trust me when I say it's not hard to find in XIV either.

[Lailani_Fey]

You should put more thought into this process. Why should SE balance new content to be more difficult because of completetion rate? Hard content is there to drive engagement with people interested in such content, not to achieve an arbitrary percentage of clears. WoW isnt the same game as FF14, you cant just assume the things that happened in wow will happen in ff14 exactly like that. Wow isnt on console, ff14 is.

I recommend reading an article called "Ion Hazzikostas on the Emphasis of Addons in Retail WoW" on the topic to see the parallels.

[strawberrycake]

I recommend reading an article called "Ion Hazzikostas on the Emphasis of Addons in Retail WoW" on the topic to see the parallels.

You realize that, that philosophy can change and most likely has? Idk if you even pay attention to WoW, or care to. But we had a recent isssue with out of game over lays for WoW. which is universally being canned by the devs and players. You can't really use an article from last year in an ever changing enviornment like MMOs, unless the devs are moving at a snails pase.

ANd I once again will say, this really only ever has leanings in major high end groups who want to clear within the first 3 weeks. Anything after is people mimicing what they think will get them easy clears and not the whole of a player base.

If the average amount of players is anywhere from 15-30 mill in each game, and from what we usually see, aroud 15% of that raids and around 9-10% actually clears, a solid 1-2% of that is high end and thats a SMALL amount of people who may or may not care about addons. In most case when you look at Addon useage right now, it's to be competitive in Clear rates and dps,we recently had a lot of high end clears in XIV come out as botted, but did anyone look at how many werent and how many real purple parses were from real input? No ofc not.

We cannot keep hyper focusing on such a small groups of people and not account for the entire raiding populace because it will always make it seem like a majority thing.

[Y2K21]

Yes, they can. Ban those who are obviously cheating. Most texture modders are quiet in game unless with friends they can trust, in which case they will ask "Do you mare?" and if they say no it gets dropped. Cheaters end up being obvious enough with it that they can be pretty easily caught and banned.

They can, but its 90% more work - because SE would have to design a method of scanning players' folder for modifications of specific kinds and not just texture mods. Which mean they would have to have the code rule out SPECIFIC modifications or files rather than flat out limiting manipulation of ALL files.

Either SE is going to ban all of it or none of it.

[LianaThorne]

Extremely gross exaggeration. Banning/preventing texture mods and mare would have a minimal impact on the number of subscribers. Additionally there isn't a way to block the people using tools to cheat that wouldn't nuke texture mods/mare in the process.

I don't think 150k players is a small chunk, especially when those 150k players help keep the game alive during dead periods like now (Source: a discord for a popular plugin).

[LianaThorne]

They can, but its 90% more work - because SE would have to design a method of scanning players' folder for modifications of specific kinds and not just texture mods. Which mean they would have to have the code rule out SPECIFIC modifications or files rather than flat out limiting manipulation of ALL files.

Either SE is going to ban all of it or none of it.

They've made their stance pretty clear by now, they aren't going to go to the trouble of saying which plugin is bad and which plugin is fine. It's a blanket blind eye unless it comes to official competitions like World First or someone goes and screams they're using them in the middle of a main city and get mass reported.

[Lailani_Fey]

You realize that, that philosophy can change and most likely has? Idk if you even pay attention to WoW, or care to. But we had a recent isssue with out of game over lays for WoW. which is universally being canned by the devs and players.

The article in question literally mentions that.

The same plugins still exist for FFXIV and nobody is going to reign those in.

Plugins that call out safe spots for you are now even shown in guide videos to fights. Surely this has no influence on anything.

[ZiraZ]

I don't see an issue if people quit en masse because they can't modbeast themselves anymore, it's not like I can even see them anyways, I thought we were fine with getting rid of ALL cheats? but now suddenly something comes out of the bag and one form of cheat is ok while the other isn't?
All or nothing.