Resurgence of people using third-party programs to find hunt marks?

[Shouko]

Snip

Is it all A/S ranks from ARR to SB? Or just SB ones? If it's all and every day I would be flagging a gm about this, I know generally they don't do anything about this sort of thing but if it happens to the point of purposely trying to prevent other players they might step in at that point.

[hynaku]

Best way to find hunts the novice network. Its better than a hunt LS. If find a hunt I always tell them first.

[Deceptus]

But to hear them say it, the Hunters are just simply better than everyone else.

They're hypocrites.

They're using timers and 3rd party software.

[Bernkastelx]

All s ranks usually have a specific thing to spawn them and a ranks aren't really that hard to find if you track their timers so really doubting the 3rd party software. Its not hard to fly over zones and eventually after hunting for so long you start to mesmerize the most popular spots they spawn in.

[Metalwrath]

All s ranks usually have a specific thing to spawn them and a ranks aren't really that hard to find if you track their timers so really doubting the 3rd party software. Its not hard to fly over zones and eventually after hunting for so long you start to mesmerize the most popular spots they spawn in.

Thats not really an explanation for why some are always there faster than everyone else.Either is as someone said they are just better than everyone else at hunting.It's nonsense.
While some of the hunts can be predicted to spawn at a certain time (Ie Moonflayer and Croakadile for example) the majority of them have variable time windows between when is the earliest possible respawn and the longest.Spawning half of them comes down to luck with the timers.

[Mwynn]

Thats not really an explanation for why some are always there faster than everyone else.Either is as someone said they are just better than everyone else at hunting.It's nonsense.
While some of the hunts can be predicted to spawn at a certain time (Ie Moonflayer and Croakadile for example) the majority of them have variable time windows between when is the earliest possible respawn and the longest.Spawning half of them comes down to luck with the timers.

The term you look for is called "Radar".

Simply said S Ranks and several FATEs have a extremely huge draw Distance, so if you stand on the edge of the Zone Map, you still will see the S Rank being on the other side of the Map.
Now what those Tools do is basically scanning the Memory ID of the S Ranks / FATEs and poof.

There are certain "Radars" that will fetch the Hunts and share it with the other Players also running that Program and Report on the Site, be surprised, those Sites are used by 99% of the Hunting Community.
In some cases, this is not the case and a different standalone Program will just tell the Player alone and not the others.

Even then as Bernkastelx said, finding A Ranks isn't that much of a Problem, now when it comes to S Ranks with hard Conditions such as the Azys Lla S Rank, you never basically know if the requirement is done.

Thats basically the Point of the OP, tho now comes the Question ...

How do you prove someone running such a Program? If you can't Report someone using a Parser, if that Person doesn't say they do so, how else could you?

If People never talk about it or don't even mention it, you're basically out of Luck and it may be even harder compared to Reporting Bots.

[Vivi_Bushido]

The term you look for is called "Radar".

Simply said S Ranks and several FATEs have a extremely huge draw Distance, so if you stand on the edge of the Zone Map, you still will see the S Rank being on the other side of the Map.
Now what those Tools do is basically scanning the Memory ID of the S Ranks / FATEs and poof.

These tools do exist and players use them all the time. In fact, ACT has a feature on it that does the same thing with the use of triggers. These triggers are posted on FFXIV reddit and most ACT users use them. (Parse programs can do a whole lot more than parse). From the description of the triggers, it calls out any hunt regardless of rank when you reach a specific amount of yalms to the target. It's most probable that ACT triggers are the radar that these suspicious individuals are using.

[KageTokage]

These tools do exist and players use them all the time. In fact, ACT has a feature on it that does the same thing with the use of triggers. These triggers are posted on FFXIV reddit and most ACT users use them. (Parse programs can do a whole lot more than parse). From the description of the triggers, it calls out any hunt regardless of rank when you reach a specific amount of yalms to the target. It's most probable that ACT triggers are the radar that these suspicious individuals are using.

ACT isn't able to tell the exact location of a hunt, only if it's present in the zone somewhere.

People have been using an offshoot of Guildworks client that was popular in the 2.x days to automatically ping them the location of S ranks so they can find them immediately even in zones with lots of obstructions that prevent you from spotting them until you get close.

As I mentioned earlier, there are people who subtly stalk me and others in my hunting linkshell, lingering around in zones where they see us being active and insta-calling the S ranks as they're spawned. Which wouldn't be an issue if there weren't players with a tendency to immediately pull said S ranks, sometimes resulting in them dying before all of us can even get there.

TLDR; lazy players with hunt detectors are causing harm for the people actually doing the hunting.

[KageTokage]

It would be nice if the information from XIV's servers such as S rank/FATE/gathering node coordinates was more...secure, because both hunt detectors and bots are dependent on getting that information in order to function.

I'm mostly annoyed by the sudden prevalence of this hunt radar because my main linkshell is comprised strictly of players who actively try to spawn S ranks, and we call hunts there before anywhere else to try to ensure that the people who are actually putting in work get kill credit. We've missed out on kills because of radar users instantly calling hunts (Some of them will just sit AFK and tabbed out in a zone with an open spawn window while they wait for someone else to spawn it) while some of the folks in my linkshell were busy trying to spawn something somewhere else.

Sadly, it's entirely on SE to do something about this, which given their track record with handling hackers and bots, isn't likely to happen. They did actually break the original hunt detecting program at some point (Though whether it was intentional or accidental is another matter entirely), but I noticed people starting to popularize a new one not long after SB released, which incidentally, is when I first started running into these strange instances of people calling hunts seconds after they spawn (I saw someone call a spawned Okina in shout and linkshell the moment they loaded into the zone next to me, and there weren't any other players next to the thing when we arrived at it).

[Tridus]

It would be nice if the information from XIV's servers such as S rank/FATE/gathering node coordinates was more...secure, because both hunt detectors and bots are dependent on getting that information in order to function.

I'd expect the server end is plenty secure. Trouble comes when the client needs to know about it. As Mwynn mentioned, large draw distances on some of these targets mean the client has to know about it from a very large distance away, and SE may just be doing it at a zone level to avoid the calculations of which clients to tell for large targets like that (in that case it just notifies every client in the zone).

Once the client is notified, it's in RAM somewhere, and securing userspace program RAM against someone who will run programs elevated to let them read memory of other programs is effectively impossible in Windows. They'd need to obfuscate the game's memory to make it harder to find, and it's probably not worth it to them.

Sadly, it's entirely on SE to do something about this, which given their track record with handling hackers and bots, isn't likely to happen. They did actually break the original hunt detecting program at some point (Though whether it was intentional or accidental is another matter entirely), but I noticed people starting to popularize a new one not long after SB released, which incidentally, is when I first started running into these strange instances of people calling hunts seconds after they spawn (I saw someone call a spawned Okina in shout and linkshell the moment they loaded into the zone next to me, and there weren't any other players next to the thing when we arrived at it).

Without changing the visible distance of S ranks and also changing the communication model to limit which clients get that information, there isn't much they *can* do. They could play whack a mole by changing the memory layout to make it harder for the program to find it, but that's whack a mole. If the people behind the radar programs are dedicated, they'll always get it working again.