Time for an anti-cheat

[Sindele]

It's not correct. I'm perfectly aware of what is available, publicly and otherwise. I am also aware of what is specifically 'integrated with the launcher'. And with a little sniffing around, you too can read the rules for which plugins get approval for said integration, and what functionality is excluded.

I'm even about 95% sure I know exactly which tool is being alluded to and what it actually does versus how it's being portrayed. If so, it is probably being mistaken for its substantially more illegal variants, which still aren't nearly as sophisticated as a proper rotation bot. Nobody making stuff at the level of full combat automation is giving it out for free, unless something new has hit the market in the last couple months and managed to slip entirely under my radar. Stranger things have happened, but given the historical accuracy of posts around here, I'm not holding my breath for a surprise.

But you will never have a World First race be publicly acknowledged by the developers again. The game will look and feel less and less like FFXIV when all of your friends start asking you where your plugins are. You will realize that less and less people play the game because it's been trivialized to obsolescence and people would rather ERP instead. You can stick around in FFXIV, but you will be disappointed. Most likely, you will move away from FFXIV and find a different game. You will say this is a good thing and proves that FFXIV is perfectly fine, but you will struggle to find your same friends in those new games. Bad decisions with FFXIV will hurt people the same way that WoW's fall did. Many people are still upset about what happened to their previous game, so why should we let that happen here? It didn't have to be this way.

Fine speech, Nostradamus, but how do you think slapping EAC on it is going to solve any of this? You've got a handful of social and design problems there. You can't fix those with engineering - better people have tried and failed.

[Mosha]

It's not correct. I'm perfectly aware of what is available, publicly and otherwise. I am also aware of what is specifically 'integrated with the launcher'. And with a little sniffing around, you too can read the rules for which plugins get approval for said integration, and what functionality is excluded.

I'm even about 95% sure I know exactly which tool is being alluded to and what it actually does versus how it's being portrayed. If so, it is probably being mistaken for its substantially more illegal variants, which still aren't nearly as sophisticated as a proper rotation bot. Nobody making stuff at the level of full combat automation is giving it out for free, unless something new has hit the market in the last couple months and managed to slip entirely under my radar. Stranger things have happened, but given the historical accuracy of posts around here, I'm not holding my breath for a surprise.

ah I just read up a bit more up the thread and it's about autorotation then yeah you are correct....woops my bad.

[Anonemoose]

Cheating in PVP is so rife I'd prefer they just delete the game mode if they don't plan on cracking down and banning cheaters.

Besides the obvious example of add-ons, there's also the popular Discord groups that turn Frontlines into a win-trading cult of personality. I'd go as far to say that if you banned all the members of those Discord communities you'd remove ~80% of the cheaters, because the overwhelming majority of them cheat with add-ons too.

[Absurdity]

Fine speech, Nostradamus, but how do you think slapping EAC on it is going to solve any of this? You've got a handful of social and design problems there. You can't fix those with engineering - better people have tried and failed.

EAC would be an amazing addition to XIV, it's super effective, just ask Elden Ring, lmao. Yes that was a joke, it would probably be more effective to ask players nicely.

[Saraide]

EAC would be an amazing addition to XIV, it's super effective, just ask Elden Ring, lmao. Yes that was a joke, it would probably be more effective to ask players nicely.

Fromsoft games are perhaps the most futile attempt at anticheat. After DS1 they introduced anticheat and it has made the cheating situation worse because the only thing it effectively delayed was the user created anticheat mod.

[UkcsAlias]

EAC would be an amazing addition to XIV, it's super effective, just ask Elden Ring, lmao. Yes that was a joke, it would probably be more effective to ask players nicely.

All these platforms require maintenance. And its not about instantly being effective, detection can take time to happen. Even if it takes a year to catch a player, that player now lost his account, in probably an even more painful way (more progress lost). And its especialy humiliating for streamers. That is why EAC is often used. Its not even ment to catch it all, its to deter usage. And it does a fine enough job. A player with a 10y old account is not going to risk losing it, so is most likely going to stop (and complain on the forums that certain qol features are lacking).

The real problem however is that the worst abusers use rootkits to circumvent detection. Rootkits are however a massive security issue. And to counter these, SE would also need to have a rootkit baced AC. Its a situation you dont want to go to. Yet this is the only way to stop the pvp and botting problem. And not even a permanent one either (maintenance is required).

I would say that valve's method of using machine learning on the server side, combined with manual reviewing, and player based reporting, does a decent job though without requiring a strong AC. Being server sided it might not detect a lot, but the worst offenders can often be caught (and lets be honest, those are usualy the worst to face. one that is barely notible is often not deemed a problem as it can still be fun to play against them since they arent flawless and can be beaten).

And this is where SE realy needs to do better effort. Those gold advertisements with machine learning could most likely have been detected in less than 5minutes using such methods.