Integrity matters

[Carighan]

Did you actually intend top reply to what you quoted, or did you just want to rant nonsensically for a little while? To vent?

[Turtledeluxe]

Relying on reports is entirely different from actually enforcing your ToS. This is like relying on patrons to check ID in a bar.

[SticksToFloors]

Achievements don’t mean anything

Nobody looks at an Ultimate title or Savage weapon and think “wow, they’re good”, they wonder which plugins they used. Every single world-first race in recent memory has been marred by cheating scandals like zoom hacks, auto-rotation scripts to execute flawless rotations, movement bots and visual overlays for perfect positioning and mechanic execution.

I'm sorry but how precisely does this work? How can you have a bot that can execute a fight before it's been cleared? That doesn't really make sense. WF races are all streamed and I think it's pretty clear that nobody in those groups is using the kinds of bots and overlays you're referring to here. Zoomhacks maybe but uh... I don't know that zooming out a bit more is quite the same as botting. Might as well chastise people for playing on an ultrawide.

Anyway when I see an ultimate weapon I'm quicker to ask if they had someone pilot their account rather than using tools as that is by far the more common way to get your hands on an illegitimate clear. I don't think I've met a single person who straight up botted an ultimate fight but I have met many who obviously purchased a pilot. Maybe I'm in the minority but I don't do content for the purpose of flexing on strangers anyway, I do it because it's fun, so whether other people are buying clears is pretty much irrelevant to me. I'm not gonna wear the title anyway.

With regards to botting things like Firmament and Cosmic Exploration I think your ire would be better spent thinking about why this content isn't fun enough for people to want to do it manually. Or better yet wondering why you care? I don't understand how other people botting Firmament affects you in any way. It's not like gil is worth anything. Maybe more fundamental problems with the game. I play for battle content anyway and I'm happy.

You also mentioned The Hunt, I'm unaware of any way to fully automate that. And even if there were I once again am wondering how and why that affects you. The time you spend in the game is granted value by you and whether you're enjoying the moments while you're playing. Are you upset that the market makes no sense? It didn't make sense before bots either and it doesn't matter anyway because gil is pretty much worthless. MSQ automation is the strangest complaint of all, how could that possibly affect your experience in any way? Are you flexing your Dawntrail completion title and upset that other players could potentially have automated it? Even though that's a thing that basically nobody does because...why would you? Confusing.

My experiences with reports and GMs have been positive, maybe yours haven't. I've never been tossed in GM jail for some unsubstantiated reason nor have I met someone who has.

Bringing up CSAM and grooming is tasteless, these things are not enabled by mods, that's a ludicrous stance to take. I have nothing more to say on the subject.

[Thurmnmurmn]

As someone who was heavily involved in hunt related content a whole lot, the only issue that's ever come up is with plugins spotting where the S rank spawns instantly without needing to scout the location. But that literally only effects people who spawn them, end up too far and taking too long to get there before it's killed. And that's only an issue really with older S ranks since the newer ones take too long to kill to be an issue.

[MsMisato]

Can be. But most people don't. And people generally ignore anyone that does or don't notice it. It's not the massive problem you're making it out to be ie. everyone in my FC isn't automating their gameplay; everyone in a linkshell I'm in isn't automating their gameplay; if these things were the case, then I'd agree.
I did and that was the reason for my answer. The series levels make the PvP worthwhile, and when I answered I'd literally just come out of a PvP match where I'd had no problems at all, and I was doing that match to advance my series level.

they even have a automated plugin for the pvp frontlines and CC for this now. it doesn't make it worthwhile. as bad as frontlines is i still kind of like it it just getting dumb that people just automate a game to play for them.

[SticksToFloors]

Haha looks like I upset a few people. As far as I'm aware I don't have a disability no. I genuinely couldn't care less what titles other people wear and how they got them and in fact I have titles disabled for people not on my friends list. I guess my point was more so that how other people play the game shouldn't have any bearing on your experience unless you're in their party and more importantly, mods are not responsible for illegitimate content clears, those are all pilots. Of course cilentside mods are basically undetectable so they're difficult to regulate but even if they weren't that's not going to do anything about people who buy pilots. Then when you get to non-high end content like Firmament and whatnot I have a hard time imagining a mindset where I would care that people are doing that.

The whole "players who did nothing wrong ending up in GM jail" spiel makes a lot more sense now if this is how you talk to people generally.

[Kup]

The tired argument of what other players do shouldn't matter really is very silly. We have rules for a reason. We call it cheating for a reason and as the saying goes, nobody likes a cheater. Trying to convince people who put in effort to obtain things and achieve goals to stop caring about other peoples ill gotten gains is a very strange choice when you have the choices to do literally nothing and just not even participate in the discussion or do very little and just support efforts of leveling the playing field within reason in the interest of fair play, morals and integrity.

I'm really not sure what anyone could even gain or what the motivations would be from such a stance unless they are abusing tools and cheating themselves. It's quite odd that this even needs to be a debate.

[Ankhira]

I'm really not sure what anyone could even gain or what the motivations would be from such a stance unless they are abusing tools and cheating themselves. It's quite odd that this even needs to be a debate.

As someone who plays only the base game, my reasoning is simple: if I got mad over everything other people did in an MMO, I’d be miserable 24/7. I focus on what I achieve. I know I earned my accomplishments by working for them and whether a random stranger bots it is neither my problem nor my concern.

If people tie their identity and self-worth this hard to in-game achievements, cheaters are the least of their worries. Focus on yourself. If you got a rare achievement, be proud! But keep in mind that the random players sitting in Limsa aren't bathing you in validation for a title over your head. You can wrap it up in fancy words like fair play, integrity, and morals, but at least be honest enough to admit this is purely about ego and exclusivity.

Saying everyone who doesn't give a damn about what other people do are using cheating tools shows just how out of touch you really are.

"We have rules for a reason." please tell me you throw just as much of a fit when someone litters on the ground IRL, that's also "against the rules." and a thousand times more harmful than someone cheating in a video game, or is it only worth getting mad over when its a hit to your egos?

That's all I'll say on this matter because there's clearly no chance of talking in good faith with you people.

[SticksToFloors]

The tired argument of what other players do shouldn't matter really is very silly. We have rules for a reason. We call it cheating for a reason and as the saying goes, nobody likes a cheater. Trying to convince people who put in effort to obtain things and achieve goals to stop caring about other peoples ill gotten gains is a very strange choice when you have the choices to do literally nothing and just not even participate in the discussion or do very little and just support efforts of leveling the playing field within reason in the interest of fair play, morals and integrity.

I'm really not sure what anyone could even gain or what the motivations would be from such a stance unless they are abusing tools and cheating themselves. It's quite odd that this even needs to be a debate.

Lol well you're welcome to accuse me of cheating but I definitely don't use any mods or plugins like is being described in this thread. If I was interested in that I'd probably have an ult clear by now! I probably wouldn't have done some odd hundreds of pulls in the first week of savage either when those tools are not available. What OP wants is a built-in anticheat which pretty clearly negatively affects games, and the vast majority of plugins that people use are not even gameplay oriented, they do things like help you transfer servers easier. These plugins are tacitly endorsed by XIV anyway and these types of mods are ubiquitous in the MMO scene. If you've spent time on the forums you should be familiar with this sort of scorched-earth mindset regarding mods which is explicitly not shared by the developers and I think it's worthwhile to push back a little in the interest of keeping anti-cheat malware off my machine. To be honest I'm not even sure I would be able to play at all with an anti-cheat since I'm on Linux and I already have to jump through some hoops to play.

And, of course, going back - mods are not what is giving people illegitimate clears in high-end content. Those are all pilots. Nobody is interested in talking about that because 1. there's no way to regulate it and 2. it doesn't further the anti-mod cause. Despite it being by far the most widespread form of cheating in high-end content in the game. We have to evade that discussion by talking about Lord/Lady of the Firmament titles of all things.

[VeyaAkemi]

Hell, a lot of people probably don't even care about the Sightseeing Log, so even here and now I've got "nothing to brag about".

I had someone rez me onto the lamppost ages ago, not because I cared about the Sightseeing Log, but because the little glowing bubble in Kugane drove me insane, it's in the middle of the city and extremely distracting, so I had someone rez me there when I had the chance. The one at the top of the tower can stay, out of sight, out of mind.