Integrity matters

[Anonemoose]

Where is this "obvious cheating problem"? As in, how do you spot it? If it's so obvious, can you give us a simple run-down list? Ideally with some examples? And is it just "obvious", or is it also "widespread"? Because if it ain't, then it ought to be easy to report and action the limited number of players who so obviously cheat, yet? And if OTOH it is widespread (and obvious!) then it should be easy to provide tons of examples that every one of us can easily verify with just a single evening of play, yes?

I asked someone earlier who said CE is always full of botters to point out some botters from who I found ingame, and they didn't get back to me either.

If cheaters and botters are so prolific, I'd like to help report them, but everyone who says they're prolific always fails to point out individuals I can report when I ask for help with that.

So erm... how do I go about that? I would like to turn words into actions.

What would be satisfactory to you? There are YouTube accounts where people documented cheaters and botters until they gave up because Square Enix either refused to do anything about it, or the people making the videos got banned for their coverage or were doxxed and harassed by cheaters until they stopped. You can find repos with cheating plugins that cover all aspects of the game with a Google search. There are dozens of Reddit threads, Discord groups and other resources that are easily accessible to discuss all manner of cheating.

Given your other posts in this thread, your request doesn't actually appear genuine to me. It seems more an attempt to get somebody to say something that you can report them for. If you really cared to learn that much, you could easily do it yourself, and you know that you could. The truth is that you probably know how all of this cheating works, especially given some of the posts you have made in this thread. Instead, you'd rather blame everybody else for not spoonfeeding you, and intimate that the people who complain about rampant cheating are clearly making it all up because they aren't helping you to understand the obvious.

[VeyaAkemi]

So I won't reply to anyone specific, rather to a sentiment in this thread, and before anything, let me state that anyone found in possession and/or sharing any form of content that is predatory to children should be punished to the full extend of the law. Please, while reading anything I say, keep in mind that is my stance first and foremost. With that out of the way...

There is a large "won't you think of the children" mentality going around here, attempting to stir a moral panic trying to correlate "some people of a specific group were criminals, therefor we must destroy that group to prevent criminals", which... I don't think I should need to justify why that's a fallacy? I am attempting to decompose the concept to its base ideas to highlight its absurdity, and very similar, even identical sentiments, changing only the targeted group, have been used for extremely evil purposes through out human history. Now I won't say it is as evil in this particular circumstance, because the targeted group is not marginalized the same way, but it is still a very similar concept, and from now on, until you see a line break, I will state my personal beliefs and interpretations, the true motivation behind it is to drive the removal of any given group that has been considered "undesirables", and that the real motivation behind that removal is a personal sense of disgust, as a result, I firmly believe that the people arguing for that are not arguing out of any genuine moral superiority, but using those news as scapegoat to justify their underlying feelings, and would still be arguing for the removal of those "undesirables" even if it never happened.

As for "MMOs were not always this horny", oh no, they were, you have no idea, MMOs have been ridiculously horny dating back to the days of Meridian 59, I would argue even further, and say that the hornyness tracks back to the MUD days before MMOs were truly a thing, if you think they weren't, you didn't know what to look for, if you think this is happening uniquely in FFXIV, you are missing so much in other games, I used to trip on full on yiff sessions in Lion's Arch, shit was surreal, and you are just left with an awkward feeling of "uh... you guys fun...", but it happened so much. Ultimately modding enables it more than other games, but it still happens everywhere, and I often been told FFXIV has nothing on WoW at its most severe, which is... alarming yet deeply fascinating, but that's besides the point.

I also don't think being horny is in any way a problem, it creates divisions between people, but only in so far as it will dilute the pool of players and so make it harder to find the people that match your freak, that's normal, every step of what I said is called "being human", all I ask of people is to do a bare minimum effort to screen out minors, asking someone's age in passing, usually something pretty easy to do in normal conversation, or including "minors DNI" to your socials is enough, and if a kid lies through that, and believe me they will lie, a lot, then it's on their parents/guardian for not keeping a closer eye on them, not on the person that was lied to.

[zarahleo]

Everything you said is completely correct and I'm tired of it too. Its time for Yoshi and crew to stop investing in crap like beastmaster and putting a lot of time into mod management (allowed and banned mods) because its ruining the game.

[Carighan]

What would be satisfactory to you? There are YouTube accounts where people documented cheaters and botters until they gave up because Square Enix either refused to do anything about it, or the people making the videos got banned for their coverage or were doxxed and harassed by cheaters until they stopped. You can find repos with cheating plugins that cover all aspects of the game with a Google search. There are dozens of Reddit threads, Discord groups and other resources that are easily accessible to discuss all manner of cheating.

None of these exemplify how to go about reporting cheaters and botters ingame. Like, how do I spot them? What are the signs? Who do I report, who do I not report?

The claims keep coming up that this is:

* widespread
* obvious
* effective (as in, it has a measurable effect)

This would indicate to me that someone can give me a simple 1-10 points list to identify and report a cheater or botter, yes? And yet every time I ask for this, or for per-case identification, no reply comes forth (as you also exemplify). This to me then suggests that maybe, just maybe, the inverse is true. As in, it's not widespread, it's not obvious, and it's not effective. As just one of those would lead to easy identification through repetition, observation or automation, respectively. It seems to me that the decried effect does not in fact exist, or at least those who suggest it does fail to point it out, despite the ability to do so being the underlying basis of their claim.

[Anonemoose]

None of these exemplify how to go about reporting cheaters and botters ingame. Like, how do I spot them? What are the signs? Who do I report, who do I not report?

The claims keep coming up that this is:

* widespread
* obvious
* effective (as in, it has a measurable effect)

This would indicate to me that someone can give me a simple 1-10 points list to identify and report a cheater or botter, yes? And yet every time I ask for this, or for per-case identification, no reply comes forth (as you also exemplify). This to me then suggests that maybe, just maybe, the inverse is true. As in, it's not widespread, it's not obvious, and it's not effective. As just one of those would lead to easy identification, either through repetition, observation or automation. It seems to me that the decried effect does not in fact exist, or at least those who suggest it does fail to point it out, despite the ability to do so being the underlying basis of their claim.

I think your problem is how transparently disingenuous you are about this. But, I mean, good luck in life bro. I'm sure you're popular on Reddit and fun at parties.

[Carighan]

I think your problem is how transparently disingenuous you are about this. But, I mean, good luck in life bro. I'm sure you're popular on Reddit and fun at parties.

Ah yes, ad hominem, always the sign of an argument well conveyed. Thanks for making it so obvious I hit a nerve.

[Anonemoose]

Ah yes, ad hominem, always the sign of an argument well conveyed. Thanks for making it so obvious I hit a nerve.

You expressly don't care about the integrity of the game (which is what this thread is about) but we're supposed to believe you care about intellectual integrity and rules of debate. Cute. This whole pseudo-intellectual meta of trying to tilt people and then claim victory because you think they got mad is very cringe. Then you throw around made-up words like "ad hominem" to try and sound clever. You're hilarious, do you do standup comedy?

[VanillaWafer]

There is a large "won't you think of the children" mentality going around here, attempting to stir a moral panic trying to correlate "some people of a specific group were criminals, therefor we must destroy that group to prevent criminals", which... I don't think I should need to justify why that's a fallacy?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but where in this discussion was anyone arguing “won't somebody think of the children” or that an entire group should be destroyed because some of its members allegedly committed crimes?

From what I've read, the argument has generally been that alleged criminal activity should be taken seriously and investigated, while also not using that activity to paint an entire game's community with the same brush.

Those seem like pretty different positions from the one you're responding to.

I get that you didn't want to respond to a specific person but I think you do need to justify what you're claiming here, because I'm not seeing anyone make the argument you're describing. Calling something a fallacy doesn't make it one; you'd first need to show where someone actually argued that “some members of a group were criminals, therefore the group must be destroyed.”

[Carighan]

If people want to be serious about integrity, the solution must be somehow related to the problem.

Like, once again, I feel if SQEX is to be serious about this they need to add server-side automated behavior checking to the server code, as applicable for individual situations, gameplay elements and gameplay situations. So if anything, campaign for this!

• That is, if someone sends command B when they press button A and command D when they press button B, whatever, nobody could care any less. To the server this is transparent, they might as well have pressed button A then button B. This doesn't matter, as any modern driver software could do exactly this, how exactly the player does this is irrelevant.
• If someone OTOH sends 4 commands in a window where only 3 (given the commands) could have been produced, and does so consistently, then that gets flagged.
• If someone moves with absolute pixel-perfect precision or hits their Ninja PvP ult just at the perfect moment it can work, this happens.
• If that person does so 126 out of 150 times over 6 days, that gets flagged.
• If character coordinates report out of bounds once, that's nothing.
• If they report out of bounds consistently despite movement across large distances and/or zones, that gets flagged.
• If someone crafts items with just 1 input sent to the server every 10-15 commands that's normal, that's what macros do.
• If the person then goes on to do this day and night for 50h+ on end without ever stopping, that gets flagged.

And so on. And so forth.

The solution as always is to create the correct fix for the problem, and in this case, trusting the client software is the wrong fix. We know this from other games. But this is also an MMORPG, so uniquely it is in a position to have an always-present, always-controlled, server to use as the authority.

[jomas_45]

If people want to be serious about integrity, the solution must be somehow related to the problem.

I really like that solution, and it wouldn't mess with security client side. I would like to see this happen.