Dear SE, please address the exploitation of "face target" command in PVP

[Exira]

It seems like the use of this method is starting to gain traction in NA and it's time we address it much like bunny hopping was back in the day.

This post was made recently asking about a potential speed hack: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...g-in-Seal-Rock

While it's not a hack, most of the time what these people are doing is using a 3rd party tool/gaming peripheral to auto-fire a key that is assigned to "/facetarget"

What this accomplishes is aslong as they are targeting someone they can move in any direction without having to turn their back on their target. So when the person in the post above saw someone "moon walking" im almost 99% sure it was just this method. As you can probably imagine this opens up a world of abuse in a PVP setting that is much more noticeable in Wolve's Den than Frontlines due to the smaller fight size.

What auto-face targetting can do:
-Guaranteed to never lose auto attacks from not being in the sweet spot when targetting someone (almost everyone but especially melee/tanks/bards)

-From a defensive stand point it basically makes bonus potencies from melee combos impossible to attain due to only being able to hit the front of a person

-Similar to the above, it makes trick attack on ninjas all but impossible to land without wasting a precious stun just to apply it

-On warrior it allows for guaranteed parries when used with raw intuition while moving away from a target because you never show them your back even though you are running away from them

In my opinion this is straight up exploiting the intended purpose of the face target command for a pretty significant advantage and while it has been mentioned to me before that you can imitate this with a macro of 15 lines of /face target , I've heard that its not nearly as effective and mindless.

So I'm asking SE, much like you did with bunny hopping destroying melee dps in the old pvp, to address this style of play

One suggestion I have would be to limit how many times the /face target command can be inputted in a time frame (1-2s?). I understand it's usefulness to casters to land their casts so we need to keep that in mind when thinking about this.

Discuss away
-Ex

[MinhSa]

Thanks for raising awareness on this exploit. I've heard about it on different forums but had no idea what it entailed!

I'm the original poster of the post you linked and I believe the summoner/warrior wasn't doing this, he was most definitely speedhacking

regardless, both are cheating in my eyes and something should be done about it

[Eskuire]

You're not talking about simply locking onto someone right? Cause on the PS4 all I do is click in L3 and it does something similar, I've never noticed if it keeps me turning no matter what. I'm a bard in PvP So I've never been actively facehit like that.

[Houston009]

All though I would love for it to be fixed for PvP (doesn't matter in PvE), I highly doubt this is something SE can fix unless the slow down the activation of /facetarget. Something that'll probably just break something else.

I propose that they remove positional requirements for melee, because auto-/facetarget is sure to become the norm once more hear about it.

[Exira]

You're not talking about simply locking onto someone right? Cause on the PS4 all I do is click in L3 and it does something similar, I've never noticed if it keeps me turning no matter what. I'm a bard in PvP So I've never been actively facehit like that.

No because that doesn't allow you to back peddle at full speed while still facing your target ^^

[insearch78]

it is unfair to ps4 players that pc players can use this sort of thing. Ive seen videos of people using this hack in AS progression to improve their dps from auto attacks, whereas the ps4 people can only use lock on that forces you to move at half speed backwards increasing your odds of getting hit from aoe. It seems like ps4 is always at a disadvantage in this game already with parsers and other plugins. Maybe they could at least remove the slowdown back pedal of lock on to even things out if fixing face targets isn't possible. At least then everyone could do it instead of just a select few.

[Sunako]

Ps4 players can use mouse and keyboard too and vice versa pc players can use controller. It is really that big issue what your console is?

[AstralKaos]

it is unfair to ps4 players that pc players can use this sort of thing. Ive seen videos of people using this hack in AS progression to improve their dps from auto attacks, whereas the ps4 people can only use lock on that forces you to move at half speed backwards increasing your odds of getting hit from aoe. It seems like ps4 is always at a disadvantage in this game already with parsers and other plugins. Maybe they could at least remove the slowdown back pedal of lock on to even things out if fixing face targets isn't possible. At least then everyone could do it instead of just a select few.

You can do it on PS4... trust me on that one.

Oh, and this has been around for ages, the Japanese PvP community has been using this for a long time now and nobody has complained about it. Meaning you know what^^

I like "gliding" personally as it ramps up fight speed and so on, makes things more exciting.

[Februs]

Ps4 players can use mouse and keyboard too and vice versa pc players can use controller. It is really that big issue what your console is?

In some cases yes.

It's true that Ps4 players can customize their control schematic to function with keyboard and mouse, but some of the default programming is different in the Ps4 version of the game and cannot be changed, leaving Ps4 at a disadvantage. We don't have as much stuff we can tweak.

Also, the way hotbars are set up on Ps4 means that if you want to use a keyboard and mouse, you have to fully commit and do away with the controller. Reformatting your entire HUD loadout is a pain and one loadout does not work for the other (ie: using the default hotbar loadout with a keyboard and mouse would actually be substantially slower when cycling your rotation).

For the most part, I actually prefer my controller to keyboard and mouse for every job except maybe healing (because party targeting is slower), but these kind of mods that PC players can do puts me at a disadvantage. To compete, I'd have to re-teach myself how to play all of my jobs over again using a completely new control schematic. It's not hard to see that it's not ideal for us to be forced to do that.

[Februs]

I like "gliding" personally as it ramps up fight speed and so on, makes things more exciting.

I can see how that might be the case... for casters, but it doesn't change the fact that it still works contrary to the system set up in place for Melee users.

Positionals are made completely irrelevant by moonwalking. We're talking about willfully eliminating a aspect of the game that encourages the use of skill in favour of increasing the overall game speed. It might not be an issue in a 72 man cluster F*** like seize, but things like this make a huge and rather annoying difference in smaller game modes like 24 man, or Wolves Den.

Also, it leaves the door open to broken gameplay. Speedhacking is easier to hide using moonwalking, and could you imagine if everyone did it? It seems nice for you now since there's only a few people who are taking advantage of it, but imagine if the entire map was full of people who glided around like specters instead of actually using their legs. The game would look and feel broken.