Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

[Skivvy]

You do know that this is a thin ice you're skating on, right?! I am not one to use this method to skip the cutscenes...I simply don't enter the dungeons anymore...but there are legal reasons why Square is extremely unlikely to follow this route. Despite what some people may think, they cannot willy-nilly ban players without a reason. And if they will ban some players for a kind of offense (exploit) and ignore other players that make the same kind of offense (exploit) even when they KNOW about it (aka. they got reports) may lead to legal issues in respect to the bans validity. Selective enforcement of rules is against fair business practices in pretty much any country where a such a trifle is enough to be a problem for the people.

You see, the "skip soar" is an exploit. Even using the undersized party feature to skip mechanics is an exploit. The fights were meant to be done in full. Every time you outperform their expectations in a fight to skip a mechanic, you exploit it. Whenever you just stand there doing nothing half of the time, you exploit the fact that this games sync system and base difficulty is not very balanced and allows others to carry you through.

Definitions are general for a reason. There needs to be a certain amount of thought behind enforcing them, as people in higher positions are expected to be "fair". As such, they chose people to play the game how they wanted to, so long as they don't use actual cheats or heavy exploits that, for example, let you deal exponentially more damage or become invulnerable. Skipping some waiting time is not nearly enough to warrant it being considered significant. In the end, the person may end up getting nothing from it if not enough people do it. And even what he will get will be lessened by the fact that someone will still watch the cutscene, so the gain is decreased even more. In comparison, "skip soar" and similar give a very major advantage. They let you avoid a do-or-die situation that could have failed you. And if you manage to use that exploit, you ALWAYS gain that from it.

In the end, they cannot really ban people for "gameplay differences". They need to use their resources to make undesired gameplay differences impossible. If they want people to not waste time in dungeons, they need to put a system that boots them from the party with a penalty if their "up-time" is not high enough, for example. Or force an instant-kill if a mechanic is managed to be avoided, like you can do in Ifrit Extreme if you take him down too much without killing the nails first.

I'm not asking for people to be banned over this. However, I was trying to clarify that it is in fact an exploit, as some people are claiming it's not. People can defend using this method all they want, but it doesn't change what it is. That's all.

IMO, there are far better things to be wasting GMs time with than "this guy DC'd in order to skip a CS!".