On "Infringing upon Others" and "Negatively impacting design"

[Valence]

Did you bring your complains to FFlogs or tomestone?

Do you think they'd be receptive to the concerns (honestly asking)?

Also I'd be quite curious to know how you'd proceed? Do I show up on their discords that are probably choke full of diehard fans of the websites, and expose my concerns? Or do I ask to talk with a manager? I'm sorry but this sounds a little masochistic.

If transparency bothers you, you can just hide your logs.

And you'd be missing the point by miles.

One of the major issues is FF14 community has a problem with motivating mastery of the game. While everyone is super friendly and nice to sprouts and casual players, the same can not be said on the other end of the scale, that is a problem for long term play. The "bragging rights" and reward for completing the most difuclt challenge is something that is not given its respect in this community as much as other MMO's, the ledgend title and its weapons should be seen as something to inspire to be one day but instead people just mock it while using a mod to take those rewards for themsevles with a smug superiority of beating the system. Taking and cheapening the rewards for mastering the game is negative for motivating people to engage with it for the long term to chase those rewards and have pride in overcoming those challenges.

They already crack down on RMT for run selling and gil selling to also try and combat this since it does cheapen the bragging rights of those items if you can just buy them? While the MSQ gets people in the door, it takes less than a month to finish, so there needs to be something to chase for the rest of the time you are subbed, you have to seek challenge somehow without gatekeeping content. One thing they could do is make content time limited so that the grandfathered prestige takes over but again, mods that get around that also ruins all motivation to chase such things.

The Ff14 community is terrible at patting people on the back for their achievements but very good at ripping people down over their insecurities of performance in the game.

I am actually confused by this statement. Everybody I know that has cleared an ultimate was met genuinely with cheers and congratulations by everyone around. Never have I seen anyone actually being a wet blanket when reacting to such announcements. What more do you want, people kneeling down every time they draw out their ultimate weapons?

[Aravell]

I am actually confused by this statement. Everybody I know that has cleared an ultimate was met genuinely with cheers and congratulations by everyone around. Never have I seen anyone actually being a wet blanket when reacting to such announcements. What more do you want, people kneeling down every time they draw out their ultimate weapons?

I think they meant a more general community thing where a lot of people make blanket statements like "everyone who owns an ultimate weapon cheated for it" or "people who do savage probably cheat". While there is genuine congratulations when people clear, there are also a lot of people who look down on anyone who clears harder content as cheaters and diminish their effort in getting a clear.

[Kaurhz]

I mean,

This is technically not wrong, though you are first and foremost likely to be reported and sanctioned for harassment, which I think is a lot easier to moderate than something like Mare, so it is easier just to go after the tool in that instance, since you can't actually moderate what people are doing with it (since they can't see it).

That being said, I do think that FFLogs should be an opt-in tool rather than an opt-out, especially if the rationale for using it is 'self-improvement'.

[BlisteringFrost]

I am actually confused by this statement. Everybody I know that has cleared an ultimate was met genuinely with cheers and congratulations by everyone around. Never have I seen anyone actually being a wet blanket when reacting to such announcements. What more do you want, people kneeling down every time they draw out their ultimate weapons?

I can actually add to this one. You're not wrong, but you're not completely correct here. I'm one of those Novice Network weirdos so the two that are my usual stomping grounds both, generally, gave me gg's and gratz's for clearing UWU when I finally got around to it and had a totem to present for my effort. Most people gave me praise. Was I showing off? Sure, you can think what you will about that, these two networks culture is OK with allowing that kind of behavior as long as it isn't getting in the way of helping somebody so it doesn't really matter if someone dislikes the fact I was showboating a lil bit in NN of all places.

But a few people, let's just say.... if I had to give you a estimate, about 4 out of 10, were insinuating I bought the clear. Whatever the reason is, I know for certain personally but am not obligated to clarify why exactly, they chose to lambast me for clearing an ultimate instead. No. So like I said, you're half right here.

[Sunhwapark]

to square you don't get to missmanage funds and then ask for money the tos breakers became a thing because your game does not have much customization

For real, where the heck is the budget to finish Viera/Hroth hats.
I'm honestly expecting a scenario in the future at the launch of 8.0 that is like "Sorry, we didn't think of adding skill/sound effects to our new class beyond level 40 because of budget issues, we'll consider to add most of them by 8.55 MAYBE - btw new mogstation items !"

[SasukeUchiha81]

Did you ever think that just maybe its as simple as what he wrote? Stop posting FFXIV NSFW pictures on Instagram and X, with the laws being made around the world against games that do such things, it could become problematic for SE. Second, he doesn't see it as fair that player B gets to flaunt what player A worked hard for and B got it for free.. There is nothing in that letter that i don't agree with. We took it too far, now dial it back, but still have fun. The end... Honestly from my POV Yoshi P is a rockstar for the way he addressed it. 100%

[Xuled]

"infringing upon others" - cute way for them to avoid accountability. while i don't care about mare users, lets apply that statement to people who are genuinely bad at the game and dont/cant/wont show improvement. YOU have to be the one who suffers from having your expert roulette run the length of a full movie instead of a quick in and out. thats "infringing" upon my right to not deal with bads but here we are. anyways with any luck, maybe these people will get weeded out now. if not, well, GCBTW

[Minali]

Did you bring your complains to FFlogs or tomestone?

Not the one who was asked, but I actually wrote an e-mail to tomestone prior to Dawntrail. I wasn't asking them directly why they don't made it opt in, only asked how to opt out, because there was no info about it anywhere on the website (at this time) how to do this. However, I also mentioned why I don't want to have any part of it, my concerns about harassment and stuff. All I got was the info about what code I have to enter to my lodestone profile and that they're going to respect the "new" privacy option introduced with Dawntrail and that was that. No reaction to anything else. So I don't know what they would answer if one would ask them directly to make it opt-in, but I didn't get the feeling privacy was in any way a concern of theirs. (Don't let me stop anyone from trying to ask more directly though, who knows, maybe they care and were just busy.)

In the end I made an account in both tomestone and fflogs to hide the info (uploaded by others or scraped from the lodestone I might add) because the amount of metadata you can get from how or when you play the game, especially on tomestone, is really awkward to me. And when Dawntrail dropped I hid my profile there as well. As long as I am not going into savage raiding, let alone apply for a static, this is simply nobody's business how I spend my time in this game. (Maybe that's the European brain speaking, idk, but how little many people in this community give about privacy is giving me the creeps, but whatever.)
And the thing is, the data is still being able to show up, because even with me opting out, not having any parsing tool installed let alone using it, the data is being collected and stored, because as soon as I set my profile public, all the old stuff is going to show up right away. (And it also appears on xivanalysis with full name, but for this you have to have a direct log link and that's just a very unlikely thing for random strangers who never met me to have.)

So the opt out option we have, isn't actually helping you to opt out of this whole stuff. It just makes your profile unsearchable with the most obvious things, but as soon as anyone running a duty with you uploads a log, you're part of these systems, even if you never even heard of them. Your name isn't even being switched to "Anonymous" or "(job) 2" or whatever in other people's logs, which would not impact the person using the logs for self improvement in the slightest.

Not sure what SE is able to do about this though. Saying it's prohibited? Parsing is already against the ToS, and that was said multiple times. I could imagine that new function of hiding your profile entirely might have been with websites scraping the lodestone like this in mind, not just individual stalkers. And yeah if anyone openly shames you for your DPS in game in no uncertain terms you can report it, but I can imagine a lot of stuff is happening in discords or voice chats or so, and they cannot act based upon this. (Which I understand. You cannot guarantee that "SugarBunny130" in Discord and "Sugar Bunny" in Game are the same person after all.) The only people who could do anything about this are the people who run these websites, and they are not going to change a more convenient opt-out system for an opt-in system likely needing a bit more effort unless the community at large demands it. (Or if they get a letter from SE's lawyer but I suppose then they'd rather just shut this down to be sure, which would cause a lot of trouble from a lot of streamers I could imagine, more than now, and not be in SE's interest.)

[Crafoutis]

First I'd like to show appreciation for the letter of the producer on mod culture that took the time to tell us more of his mind on the matter and clarify a few things.

Now while I still find it's beating around the bush a little too much and could need further clarification, and putting aside that I find a bit ludicrous that one of the reasons to crack down on Mare that was brought up can literally be boiled down to "sharing visual mods negatively affects bragging rights for players that ran an ultimate", I do understand other more serious concerns like the spreading of NSFW mods publicly and damaging the image of the game. But again on the latter, it's not Mare that was posting NSFW screenshots on social media, but players at the individual level, which makes me a little puzzled once more on the examples being given and the justifications that go with it.

However seeing talks about infringement upon others negatively, bragging rights, mogstation rights, or anything else, this immediately makes me wonder about other third party tools like fflogs and tomestone. They are not visual mods and don't modify games files directly, but they certainly do have a wide spread impact over the whole game and community, and some sides that I can safely say, are clearly negative and infringing upon others.

FFlogs and Tomestone aren't something that stays at the individual level, aren't something that's kept in private as it is literally publicly available websites tracking data and activity for every player in the game. Furthermore, anybody can upload data obtained in the game about another player without them knowing, and without their consent. I am not writing this from a legal point of view, but from a consistency point of view. If you think that third parties can be infringing upon others in a bad way, then I want you to take a cold, hard look at those types of websites and data aggregators, that while they may provide a lot of useful information at a statistical level or for self improvement, they also collect data about other players without their consent and are usually widely used to dismiss or outright harass others.

Note: the point of the thread is not to take down and burn the websites, thank you.

Beating around the bush is necessary when you're combating rules-lawyers who will jab their finger at anything you say and use whataboutism; meanwhile the goal here is to keep the game clean, fair, and consistent.

People who don't want those three things will use any dirty trick in the book you write with your words. So, best to remain vague and ban them.

[Moonlite]

Not being facetious with this. What action do you want SE to take against outside websites? I do think your point is valid but what action do you want from SE?

Companies have websites taken down all the time. This is a strange statement.


I think this is all just people being mad. But if a few websites went down, the new ones would probably be more discreet. And wasn't that really the whole point. SE cost, design, or choice isn't going to enforce anticheating. Just be discreet.