Another World First Clear got disqualified due to "Cheating"

[Penthea]

I don't get it. The rules are clear. Mods, plugins/Cheats or any other way of getting an advantage over others is forbidden.

I don't understand why it is so hard to respect that.

It's called being a sore loser. It's not enough for them to clear the fight. They want to look better than everyone else by any means possible.

Before anyone gives me the "every raiding team cheats" tripe, how do you even know this to be true? Did you somehow inspect every single team?

It's also much harder to effectively hide cheating on stream. Yes you can have overlays that don't display on a stream, have audio cues that only you can hear, etc...but that is a HUGELY risky move because things can and do go wrong during streams. I remember a long time ago a WoW raider accidentally tabbed into a window on stream that showed they were using third party software to play their class for them. I witness audio malfunctions very often in streams - when something only the streamer is supposed to hear gets broadcasted to the viewers as well. All it takes is a split second of something going wrong to get caught. There's also the situation in which a person that heavily relies on a plug-in begins to play noticeably worse if it ever malfunctions, which would obviously point to suspicious behaviour.

I would actually be surprised if any remotely sensible streamer, who relies on FFXIV content creation to keep a roof above their head, uses anything more than a parser while participating in the world race, if they even do. It's just such a madly dumb move to put your career on the line for something that doesn't guarantee you a win. The Echo/Mogtalk stream peaked at around 20k viewers and had on average 12 - 14k for the race as a whole...none of the competitors streamed on that platform would be dumb enough to risk cheating with an audience that size watching them. It would be instantly career ending to get caught.

Streaming doesn't and never will prevent all cheating, but it presents a significantly higher risk of getting caught. And that's enough for many to forget about trying to hide plug-in use. The only group who can entirely prevent cheating is SE, but unless they step in and host a tournament themselves or officially sponsor one, the best thing that can be done is only acknowledge competitors who stream.

[Themarvin]

It's called being a sore loser. It's not enough for them to clear the fight. They want to look better than everyone else by any means possible.

Before anyone gives me the "every raiding team cheats" tripe, how do you even know this to be true? Did you somehow inspect every single team?

It's also much harder to effectively hide cheating on stream. Yes you can have overlays that don't display on a stream, have audio cues that only you can hear, etc...but that is a HUGELY risky move because things can and do go wrong during streams. I remember a long time ago a WoW raider accidentally tabbed into a window on stream that showed they were using third party software to play their class for them. I witness audio malfunctions very often in streams - when something only the streamer is supposed to hear gets broadcasted to the viewers as well. All it takes is a split second of something going wrong to get caught. There's also the situation in which a person that heavily relies on a plug-in begins to play noticeably worse if it ever malfunctions, which would obviously point to suspicious behaviour.

I would actually be surprised if any remotely sensible streamer, who relies on FFXIV content creation to keep a roof above their head, uses anything more than a parser while participating in the world race, if they even do. It's just such a madly dumb move to put your career on the line for something that doesn't guarantee you a win. The Echo/Mogtalk stream peaked at around 20k viewers and had on average 12 - 14k for the race as a whole...none of the competitors streamed on that platform would be dumb enough to risk cheating with an audience that size watching them. It would be instantly career ending to get caught.

Streaming doesn't and never will prevent all cheating, but it presents a significantly higher risk of getting caught. And that's enough for many to forget about trying to hide plug-in use. The only group who can entirely prevent cheating is SE, but unless they step in and host a tournament themselves or officially sponsor one, the best thing that can be done is only acknowledge competitors who stream.

It is true every team use ACT and most also cactbot as well, and or configured ACT to their specific strategy..., that is just a fact.

[VeyaAkemi]

It is true every team use ACT and most also cactbot as well, and or configured ACT to their specific strategy..., that is just a fact.

A point is that the use of parsers can be seen as mandatory for raiders, even ignore all the culture around it in the raiding scene, do consider: This is a game where high end content has enrages, to ensure you actually play well, and don't just walk in with 4 RDM and spam rezzes until the boss falls over, enrages are essentially raid-long DPS checks, the game never gives you any way to tell if you are doing well or not in terms of DPS, there is no way to tell if your rotation is good or not, or even if you did follow a guide, if you are executing it well, maybe you are concerned to fumble it in the heat of the moment, parsers are the only way to be certain that you are up to par, because the game never gives you a way to know otherwise.

ACT does have more to it than a parser, but that's a whole other can of worms, it's a framework tool, and how each person uses the framework is on them.

[AllenThyl]

A point is that the use of parsers can be seen as mandatory for raiders, even ignore all the culture around it in the raiding scene, do consider: This is a game where high end content has enrages, to ensure you actually play well, and don't just walk in with 4 RDM and spam rezzes until the boss falls over, enrages are essentially raid-long DPS checks, the game never gives you any way to tell if you are doing well or not in terms of DPS, there is no way to tell if your rotation is good or not, or even if you did follow a guide, if you are executing it well, maybe you are concerned to fumble it in the heat of the moment, parsers are the only way to be certain that you are up to par, because the game never gives you a way to know otherwise.

ACT does have more to it than a parser, but that's a whole other can of worms, it's a framework tool, and how each person uses the framework is on them.

That's a load of baloney. Every skill says how much potency damage it deals. The rotation that deals more potency is the one that will deal higher damage. You don't need to have a 3rd party plugin installed to go to a website / discord of your choice and find the optimal rotation for any job you are interested in. If the guide with the optimal rotation says "use skill A, then B, then C", and the players don't do that, what difference does a 3rd party plugin that violate the ToS make?
And no, ACT is definitely NOT required to raid. What is required though, is people actually learning their job and not having an uptime of 65% even against striking dummy bosses.

[Penthea]

And no, ACT is definitely NOT required to raid. What is required though, is people actually learning their job and not having an uptime of 65% even against striking dummy bosses.

Yea this idea that a parser is mandatory for raiding is ridiculous, especially in a thread about world first players. If a world first team has to worry about a player not doing enough dps then that team frankly has no business even attempting to get world 50th, never mind world first.

The plug-ins that typically cause discourse in the world race are related to those that reduce how observant you need to be. Such as an overlay that shows you the exact size of your hitbox at all times, automated marking, audio cues to remember things for you, etc. Things that actually reduce the mental workload of doing mechanics so you can concentrate more on dps.

[Supersnow845]

That's a load of baloney. Every skill says how much potency damage it deals. The rotation that deals more potency is the one that will deal higher damage. You don't need to have a 3rd party plugin installed to go to a website / discord of your choice and find the optimal rotation for any job you are interested in. If the guide with the optimal rotation says "use skill A, then B, then C", and the players don't do that, what difference does a 3rd party plugin that violate the ToS make?
And no, ACT is definitely NOT required to raid. What is required though, is people actually learning their job and not having an uptime of 65% even against striking dummy bosses.

ACT is simply a way to make this games horrendous battle log actually useable it is not remotely the problem. Here a list of important and relevant information to a prog that the games battle log DOESNT SHOW (there is much more this is just off the top of my head)

1) how much an attack is mitigated as a net percentage when mitigation is stacked
2) what the overkill is of an attack that killed you
3) what entity the attack originated from for the purposes of targeted mitigation
4) whether a positional hit or not

The battle log also doesn’t allow

-zooming in around a particular death to look at the damage profile around it
-separation based on player/role
-isolation of non boss entities that also execute mechanics

And many others

ACT isn’t just a DPS meter, it’s a method to make this game’s absolutely borked battle log somewhat usable for its actual purpose

[Tint]

ACT is simply a way to make this games horrendous battle log actually useable it is not remotely the problem. Here a list of important and relevant information to a prog that the games battle log DOESNT SHOW (there is much more this is just off the top of my head)

1) how much an attack is mitigated as a net percentage when mitigation is stacked
2) what the overkill is of an attack that killed you
3) what entity the attack originated from for the purposes of targeted mitigation
4) whether a positional hit or not

The battle log also doesn’t allow

-zooming in around a particular death to look at the damage profile around it
-separation based on player/role
-isolation of non boss entities that also execute mechanics

And many others

ACT isn’t just a DPS meter, it’s a method to make this game’s absolutely borked battle log somewhat usable for its actual purpose

Sounds like ACT is a cheating tool.

If it was just a dps meter - fine. But with all this additional information it provides you clearly have an advantage over people who don't use ACT / are on console.

[Supersnow845]

Sounds like ACT is a cheating tool.

If it was just a dps meter - fine. But with all this additional information it provides you clearly have an advantage over people who don't use ACT / are on console.

Yeah so the game collects information but refuses to show it to people and the problem is forcing the game to reveal this information in a way that can actually be read and not the fact that they won’t update the battle log to actually reveal this information

You shouldn’t HAVE TO use ACT to tell how much combined mitigation is used against an attack WHEN THE GAME COLLECTS THIS INFORMATION, it just won’t show it to you

[Saraide]

Sounds like ACT is a cheating tool.

If it was just a dps meter - fine. But with all this additional information it provides you clearly have an advantage over people who don't use ACT / are on console.

Contrary to unpopular believe, you can make full use of the data that ACT provides when you are on console. Just need to have a pc player with act with you in the group which should never be a problem unless you are a crank.

If you want to take the combat log and throw it into a massive excel spreadsheet however, more power to you. You will either realize that it's a waste of effort and realize that you should just use the much more direct tool ACT or you realize your potential as excel god and start competing in the excel world championship. That's a real esport btw.

[Mortex]

Sounds like ACT is a cheating tool.

If it was just a dps meter - fine. But with all this additional information it provides you clearly have an advantage over people who don't use ACT / are on console.

I really enjoyed not knowing if a stack or aoe was magical, physical or (and this is the best one) freaking darkness damage. Same as buff timer that took them until endwalker and a person getting banned for it to be implemented. How does a more or less free online side and random modder do a better job in quality of life changes or viera and hrothgar hats/hairstyles then square does. We do pay money and don’t get the most basic stuff that people do for free.