Quote Originally Posted by JackHatchet View Post
Ok, serious question, because I'm a newbie.

Is it really a lie that Act isn't a hacking tool? Does it change anything in-game or is it just an overlay? I mean, at its core it is against the ToS for being third-party, but is it hacking into the game? I'm not asking if calling it a hacking tool is hyperbole or not. I'm asking if the statement is actually factually true or if people are lying to themselves and saying it's not? I have no idea.

Again, I don't know about act. But you could still argue that modding actual files in the game is hacking into it. Don't you have to access files to hack into it?
In the strictest interpretation, yes ACT is a hacking tool. It is a program that accesses another parties data without consent; the data belongs to SE and they've said no to parsers and mods. That said, ACT can't be used to manipulate your account or anyone elses to its actual use as a hacking tool as most people interpret hacking is nonexistant. All ACT really does is read the data and create an overlay (Think of that as a transparent browser window open over FF14) that it puts your data onto.

You can actually do for yourself what ACT does with the information in the battle log, ACT just save you a lot of time and effort doing it.

MODs are often less of a hacking tool and more of a file replacement. As an example, anytime the game shows your character it will call use the file shirt.jpg. So what you do to mod your shirt is replace that file with a different image also named shirt.jpg. Now when the game calls that file it will show your replaced image instead of what it came with. Sometimes for more comprehensive mods you'll need to edit a database file somewhere and thats where you get more into hacking territory by its strictest definition. But nobody would seriously consider a mod a hacking tool.