Time for an anti-cheat

[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.

[Aword3213]

Odd, I googled it and some of the main results are about massive banwaves... guess the anti cheat does work!

How disingenuous can one possibly be

[Aword3213]

That's fine, and you're welcome to have that opinion. I'm not allowed to post any proof because it breaks TOS.

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.

Square Exnis thanks you for the undying support with fantasia purchases.

[NekoMataMata]

For those of you at home, this is what one calls 'a lie'. Like, blatant, bold-faced, Fox News-grade, disprovable-in-ten-seconds-by-anyone-who-looks lying. You should be better than that. You aren't, clearly, but you should be.

Neither of you are being completely honest here.

My old FC's raiding channels had a bunch of pins for entirely free add-ons for the popular launcher people use. Stuff that would add overlays and tell you where to move. I doubt it's naturally integrated into the launcher since you need guides to set it up, but it is free.

I assume whoever runs the launcher has the same outlook as SE and doesn't want the drama that would come from trying to police whatever people use it for.

[Mosha]

Neither of you are being completely honest here.

My old FC's raiding channels had a bunch of pins for entirely free add-ons for the popular launcher people use. Stuff that would add overlays and tell you where to move. I doubt it's naturally integrated into the launcher since you need guides to set it up, but it is free.

I assume whoever runs the launcher has the same outlook as SE and doesn't want the drama that would come from trying to police whatever people use it for.

There talking about autorotation specifically and it falls into the same stuff you mentioned it isn't directly integrated into the launcher.

[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.

[Sindele]

Neither of you are being completely honest here.

My old FC's raiding channels had a bunch of pins for entirely free add-ons for the popular launcher people use. Stuff that would add overlays and tell you where to move. I doubt it's naturally integrated into the launcher since you need guides to set it up, but it is free.

I assume whoever runs the launcher has the same outlook as SE and doesn't want the drama that would come from trying to police whatever people use it for.

I'm being as honest as is possible without flying too close to the sun. There's wild enough stuff out there without making new things up.

Mosha's right, but I'll add that the most common tools like the ones you mention predate the launcher and don't necessarily require memory injection (though I believe it's used currently because it's more reliable than the alternative after the TCP compression changes this year.)

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.

Lots can be said about Valve's business practices, but their approach to cheating and enforcement has consistently been some of the best-in-class and a model worth following.

[UkcsAlias]

Lots can be said about Valve's business practices, but their approach to cheating and enforcement has consistently been some of the best-in-class and a model worth following.

Team fortress 2 has been unplayable through valves matchmaking for over a year. It was that bad that every game you would face several cheaters (the kind of blatant server killing aimbot). They have been very lazy acting against this. The only ones who benefitted here were custom servers as they thrived as they actualy had proper ways to detect and kick them. Most aimbots whenever they made a blatant streak were already detected as such and banned within a minute. it surely would still have been disruptive, but in most cases not in a problematic way and it still would have required key timing to truly do that.

So to realy push valve forward as example i wouldnt say. Its realy only in counter strike where they take the extra effort. But it shows that to fight cheaters you need to invest money. And tf2 wasnt bringing enough here.

To that using some basic detection would have been better, but yeah, valve obviously doesnt want to promote a competing product through their own games.