Please make plugins and hooks impossible, or ban people over them.

[Surian]

I re-subscribed after being gone for a month just before last weekend again. Naturally my gear was a little outdated, and i wasnt playing on my main job anyhow since i wanted to get a feel for the new dungeons first on a DPS class.

Couple fights in, one of the party members comments that my DPS output is low and mentions a number, tells me to pick it up a little. I tell him i'm sorry but i have no idea what he means with the number he mentions, i tell him i only got back the day before and havent been able to gear up to the new standards yet. I also point out that the dungeon average is ivl55 and i dont seem to be having any problems at ilvl79 killing things or staying alive.

Apparently this person was able to parse my damage output by using a third party application that hooked into the game called FFXIV-APP.

Not only did this piss me off that i was getting commented on in a trash dungeon we could (and did) easily clear without any effort at all. But he is also able to do this without being punished for it at all.

A: Why is it STILL possible to hook scripts and applications like that (others would be bots and the likes) into the game without any sort of Guard or protection in place that stops and/or detects things like this, like every other MMO has, even free to play ones?

Trivially simple. Is a .dll file being injected into the executable of the game? yes? then flag the account and ban them outright. It's not rocketscience.

And B: Why arent people being banned over using exploits and things like this that ruin the fun i'm having in this game unnecessarily? Apparently there's a lot of people using things like this. And not even for harmless purposes of checking how well they do. They use it as a means to harass others and put them down. I for one didnt want to play at all anymore after that that day. And lets not forget that the same gimmick can easily be used for bots and what not.

[Orophin]

Report them for Harassment, that's about all you can do. Good programmers can find ways to circumvent things. As a patch comes out and the dev team changes memory addresses for things, saavy programmers just find the changes and alter their programs to work again. It's a never ending cycle.

[Jamie28334]

Unfortunately the way computers work means it's very easy for people to simply write a program that will tell another program what to do and how to behave and change anything that they like. It is the crowning achievement and the ultimate downfall of modern computing.
There probably are ways to make it more secure and such but I can only imagine this means it costs a lot of money in either licensing fee's to put in place an existing piece of software or to make one from scratch specifically for this game.
They never bothered with it in FFXI and their deterrent was to simply police the game with GM's and ban you if you got caught. It's quite depressing to see they don't want to put the effort into making something to stop these people from using programs in the game but from what I can speculate about SE is they can't afford to do anything like this.

My suggestion would be to report them if it does bother you, but fortunately most people tend to use the programs for stuff like analysing damage so it's never usually malicious. The problem is when some people seem to think that numbers matter all the time and use it against others which is what you mentioned. I've still not seen a person using a program to enhance their character somehow so I can only imagine those types are few and far between.

If anyone gives you that attitude again just tell em to p155 0ff or you'll stop playing in the dungeon to report them for their illegal activities. Usually most people shut up and carry on when they are told.

[scarletfoxxy]

report them! IMMEDIATELY! anyone claiming your dps is low report them! chances are, once they're investigated it will show they are using 3rd party software. otherwise it's close to impossible to tell if someone's (specific individual) dps is low. Get used to reporting people. if you want the community to change you gotta do your part. 90% of top FCs use them so it's painfully obvious they exist and these claims are valid. I don't think it's wrong to use them for your own personal analysis or if your team agrees to be parsed but for anyone not agreeing to be parsed then that person shouldn't be told about their under performance unless they are dying to mechanics.

[Pence]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but SE has already said addons are coming. Parsers and meters will be more common place.

Seems to me you have more an issue with a kids 'tude, rather than parsing.