Another World First Clear got disqualified due to "Cheating"

[KuroMaboroshi]

Before anything, here's the obligatory "Anti-cheat software is a huge security risk and violates privacy rights and therefore has no business in any game, no matter how bad the cheating ever gets" disclaimer. I am glad XIV is one of the (sadly fewer and fewer) big online games that actually is considerate of this, and it should stay that way.


Onwards to the topic of Ultimate cheating specifically:
Since Square does not sanction or endorse the World First race anyway, and it is a community-driven thing, the biggest reaction is likely going to be complete radio silence on those races from SE. The community will bickerabout it all and that's it, rinse and repeat at the next Ultimate. But as there is no way to be 100% certain if someone's cheating or not, and never will be, we are just stuck with this situation and better get used to it. I personally can't even muster much rage anymore about it. So yeah, someone cheated at the world first race. Just like last time. Does it impact me playing the game? No? Alright, moving on...


What I think is interesting is how some are trying to be very reductive about Ultimates always in light of these cheating incidents. It is content to be tackled by anyone that wishes to, at their own pace, and on their own terms.
And so, no, people using cheats in the world first race is no reason to cut back on Ultimate content. I know Yoshi-P threatened to do so, but that is misguided and if I am honest sounded more like a gut reaction of someone who was - understandably so - emotionally upset at the situation back then.
But some bad actors with no interest in Ultimates to begin with like to claim otherwise, out of an unfounded hope that cutting Ultimates would get them more of whatever content they like the most.
But an Ultimate is way more than just the World First race. I do not care if someone cheated at the game for them to be the first to clear it, I care for eventually getting around to clearing those fights myself.
Even the prevalence of certain cheat tools in PF would be no good reason to cut content they apply to, cause there might still be an untold number of 8/8 statics that never show up in PF that do the fight without those tools. Collective punishment is not the right call, ever.

[MAJRIS]

clear ultimate world first with your bros
take a screenshot
ctrl+v it into paint
accidentally click
red dot in the middle of the shot
not notice it and press save
now gaijins think you're cheating
/s

I just don't get why they wont make it like good old school counterstrike competitions when the teams would meet on neutral ground and play on untampered computers while streaming is on.

[Carbon20XX]

SE won't ever add a anti-cheat because I'm sure they've done the math on how hard it hits their bottom line. Ignoring the obvious visual and cheat mods it's tradition at this point for someone to get banned for a plugin and they have the feature that plugin added be in a patch. As well as their being plugins that make playing on high ping actually possible. All SE should really do in this case is that same thing they did to UNNAMED which is remove their titles and make them each delete their weapons.

[Commander_Justitia]

Anti-cheat software has no business in any game

I do not care if someone cheated at the game.

So where is your priority?

I guess they could do an official world first race. Where there is a prize, and so the participants are willing to comply to either get monitored or play on devices that SE provides.

[Supersnow845]

So where is your priority?

I guess they could do an official world first race. Where there is a prize, and so the participants are willing to comply to either get monitored or play on devices that SE provides.

I would be totally up for this

Have square sponsor an official world first for any team that wants to sign up rather than dumping the responsibility on echo and frosty and that’s basically the only WF anyway me watches

If you want to silently prog with your team that’s fine but you are going to get accused of hiding cheats and mostly ignored compared to the square sponsored event

[Reimmi]

They won't ban addons/mods, they've made that clear.
How about releasing the ultimate the same day the patch comes out so plugin devs can't have it done in time for the race?

[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.

[Nero-Voidstails]

Instead of banning all modding they really should use this a motivator to make a couple of the mechanics in high-end fights less predictable.

But this is the ironically named Creative Studio 3, so perish the thought.

and punish people who play legit? doesn't make sense at all people are just unable to "waste" time anymore that's all

[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.