Integrity matters

[Hanzz96]

Yes, but unless you give him time to actually implement a fix, what you're performing, no matter the situation is unilateral action, and it can be used to justify all the cheating and hacking that goes on.

Even if he comes out and says, no, I'm not implementing a feature or I'm not fixing a function of the game. Really, the choice is to exit the system, not modify it at your whim.

I'm not engaging anymore. Last year when the whole Mare thing happened Yoshi P literally said use what you want as long as it doesn't interfere with others and cosmetic mods and ping tools do not.

The facts are killing all mods would kill the game 100% and it's the raiders who need to double weave and the people who like pretty hair that sub all year and all expansion long to keep SE's lights on and other projects funded.

Take your pitch forks and witch hunts elsewhere. Go play the game.

[Daralii]

People keep saying "Just use an anti-cheat", with 0 technical understanding what means and 0 social understanding how that was a 2004 solution, in 2026 that's laughable at best and downright insulting at worst.

It was laughable even in 2007. A very common complaint I saw back when I started playing WoW was that underground bots kept teleporting around and sniping rare gathering nodes.

[Carighan]

Yes, but unless you give him time to actually implement a fix, what you're performing, no matter the situation is unilateral action, and it can be used to justify all the cheating and hacking that goes on.

Huh?

People waited an entire game. Until the first expansion. And the solution isn't a cheating/hacking tool, it forces your client to send the action to the server even if the client insists you shouldn't because of ping reasons. The server might and can reject it, but you sent it regardless. That's what it does. Or well rather, it makes the client think that the ping is 0, but the behavioral change is the same. The client refuses interactions that are faster than the ping, by pretending it is effectively 0, the client makes a positive guess and assumes the server will be alright with the sent interaction.

Whether the server rejects or accepts your input relies on whether you were actually still performing an action when the command arrives at the server.

So as an example, assume you got a ping of 30 and a magical ability that has only a 60ms animation lock. It takes 30ms to notify the server of something, and 60 for your client to receive confirmation that the server understood this.
At 0, you sent action A to the server.
At 30, the server begins executing action A for your character in its serverside log.
At 60, your client knows the server did this. The animation lock is finished, the client received word the server is ready to accept another input, you can press it again!

Now imagine your friend has a ping of 90.
At 0, they send action A to the server.
At 60, the animation lock finishes, but since the client is still waiting for the server confirmation you cannot press it again.
At 90, the server gets it, starts processing it.
At 180, they are free to press another button. By this time, you have performed the same action three times.

What fixes to this do (and what better games do) is make the client optimistically send the command anyways. So to get back to your friends example:
At 0, they send action A to the server.
At 60, the animation lock finishes. You are now free to press it again, despite the client not having received the server OK.
At 90, the server gets action A the first time, starts processing it.
At 120, your animation lock expires again, you are free to press the action a third time.
At 150, the server receives your second command. As 60ms animation lock have also expired on the server, this is accepted, and fine (had it arrived earlier the server would have discarded it).
etc...

So essentially this allows you to send 3 commands independent of ping. Notice how the high-ping case is still slightly disadvantaged even with such a fix, because their attacks are processed at 90, 150 and 210, not 30, 90 and 150. By 150 they have only dealt damage twice, not thrice. But at least they could keep pressing their buttons at the same cadence instead of having to slow their fingers down when they have a higher ping in a worse network.

See how the fix works? It's not some hacking or cheating tool. It's still suboptimal to just sitting on a better connection.

You might have something else in mind - a real cheat maybe - but the person you quoted was talking about this enforcement of optimistic sends.

[Hanzz96]

Huh?

He doesn't care how it works or why. These people are just on a silly witch hunt. I genuinely doubt any of these people actually play the game and just come here to troll and be weird.

[Turtledeluxe]

I'm not engaging anymore. Last year when the whole Mare thing happened Yoshi P literally said use what you want as long as it doesn't interfere with others and cosmetic mods and ping tools do not.

The facts are killing all mods would kill the game 100% and it's the raiders who need to double weave and the people who like pretty hair that sub all year and all expansion long to keep SE's lights on and other projects funded.

Take your pitch forks and witch hunts elsewhere. Go play the game.

I don't have any pitchforks and I'm not advocating for anti-cheat software. People said there's no intellectual argument behind this, and I'm just showing that there is. It's more of a thought experiment than it is calling a judgment on people who mod. You are correct, the players and the devs cooked up this situation together. Whether you want to frame that as they're both to blame or whatever is any given person's prerogative. Not acknowledging any of the downsides of it, though, is unfair, in my opinion.

If anything, I just think it shows the other side is anti-intellectual because you're continuing to argue, well, we fixed this and we fixed that, and I already made the point of why that's irrelevant.

I think the post about ping is desperate and patronizing as I already covered distinction between the devs implementing tools, features, solutions (by extension, third party can ALSO provide these things). If you read my post and seriously think I correlate all third-party activity with cheating and hacking, you have a reading comprehension problem. I moreso brought up cheating and hacking to say that it's no skin off my back if you do. That's not really my motive for discussing this. If someone used assistance or cheated to get their ultimate weapon or their title or whatever, I genuinely don't care.

[Kup]

Because I don't have to spend my whole life leading in with platitudes as though I'm trying to tip-toe around angry mobs on X? I don't have to care or find things important, or care that you do. I don't have to think actions need to be made because other people care about something that I don't think is a priority, either. This really screams of needing everyone to say "even if I disagree with you, you should get what you want."

I also already wrote pages ago that "people have different views" since that's a given in life?

Well, it's a forum, you're entitled to voice whatever opinion you have on any subject. Using your time voicing that opinion on a topic about an issue that people care about when your opinion basically is "I don't care about this" doesn't really add anything at all of any substance but I suppose you don't need to do that either.

[Carighan]

I have zero understanding about this, but how WoW does nowadays? Because with such a large community there, I don't think I ever heard of people actually automating fights. There are reports of people botting more trivial stuff like gathering professions though, but even those don't seem to be as readily available and easy to set as modding is in XIV.

Kinda happens, kinda doesn't.

One thing WoW does do, and successfully so, is enforce a more-or-less-full "1 player interaction = 1 action". If your character is supposed to do 3 "things", you need to have physically made 3 "inputs".

But, tools are ~free to swap the action or the specifics. So for a very simply example, a long long time ago a Paladin had to spend 3 minutes out of ever 5 minutes casting 5 minute lasting buffs one-by-one onto every single member in a 40 person group. What players did is code an addon that fully automated this, as long as you weren't pressing anything else, this addon buffed the raid. But then the limitation I mentioned above was brought in (very early in the game still) and instead you had a single button you just kept pressing. It'd automatically select which buff and which target, check for who is in range, and cast it. It automatically did nothing if nobody needed a buff (could configure it).
See the other problem? Freewheel scrollwheels like many logitech mice have! (or wooden peckbirds if you want to get playful) Set that new auto-button to mousewheel down, give the mouse a spin, go afk while your character keeps buffing from repeat "mousewheel was rolled down" inputs.

And that's... essentially how it still works. Not exactly that way, but kinda? There are ways to generate repeat computer interactions even without full automation (after all shoving the freewheel was a player interaction!) and tools to keep changing what that does, moving, actions, etc. Just continuously remapping.

Beyond that, actual cheating is always observable in particular around PvP despite frequent bans. And actual full botting including noclip hacks and teleportation happens just the exact same way as in FFXIV, to gather materials. Auction house automation is far more proliferated than in FFXIV, owing partially to crafting being faster as it is a single button, but also counteracted by the economy being intentionally pointless to a near-total degree (this was an intentional fix I presume).

[caffe_macchiato]

Maybe they just genuinely are bitter they can't play the game with addons

Correct. I am a console player and cannot use addons. I am only owed what I am given, which is access to the game under the condition that I follow the rules. Everyone else should be held to the same standard.

Of all the L takes in the world you win. Even in supported regions like NA Canadian's have trouble double weaving correctly because of netcode and server distance.

The distance from LA to Sao Paulo is 2.5x the distance between LA and NYC. They are not comparable.

Also Latin America and SEA spend a lot of money on this game

You should have known you aren’t entitled the moment you launch the free trial, before paying a single cent. The regional center is called North America. There is no Spanish or Portuguese support. You clicked on North America, in the English language, played with a bad ping, and then willingly chose to buy the full game under those conditions. This is why there is a free trial. The game developers didn’t forget about you, they gave you everything you needed to decide if the game was for you. You had hundreds of hours of gameplay to walk away knowing this game wasn’t for you.

[Carighan]

You shouldn't edit someone's quote when you quote it. That's pretty gross misrepresentation, and kinda indicates you don't know how to respond at all. Not responding is always an option, I might add.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Well, it's a forum, you're entitled to voice whatever opinion you have on any subject. Using your time voicing that opinion on a topic about an issue that people care about when your opinion basically is "I don't care about this" doesn't really add anything at all of any substance but I suppose you don't need to do that either.

But it does. I'm sharing I don't find what OP is saying to be worth spending time on. I'm allowed to have my feedback to prevent an echochamber where only people who agree are allowed to speak.