So people are defending the msq dc exploit

[Rosa_Frandlia]

If you genuinely disconnected, and came back to find everyone else still in the cutscene, you don't have to keep going. You can stay there and wait for the others to finish, and all continue on together. As the developers clearly envisaged everyone doing in the first place, without the need to force it upon people the rest of the time, although it was evidently an overly optimistic view of player behaviour.

It is, but there's even a non-cut scene place where players are left behind frequently. The elevator. I once had someone click it right as I was trying to get onto it and it kicked me off, making me way behind the rest of the party. Sometimes I've seen it where only 2 or 3 people are on the elevator and leave the rest behind too. This is all too common already.

This is the same as any dungeon where someone wants to watch the CS before the final boss. You can see 'Viewing Cutscene" as the name and wait till it is gone to pull.

[KaivaC]

So skipping cutscenes in the MSQ is now considered a "cheat".

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Aellae]

This thread turned into a ridiculous witch hunt and white knight fiesta and I am just shaking my head right now.

Investigate and ban people that skip cutscenes? Holy kupo, people, calm down...

[Brynne]

I kinda hope they introduce the trust thing really early and make it so you have to do those dungeons with your trust NPCs (or some FC friends, basically fixed party of some sort) before you can queue for them with other people. Then they can remove the 'no skip' part, new players can choose for themselves whether to watch cutscenes on their first run, and the roulette rewards can be back to normal so people can run it for exp and poetics as before.

[Aeva]

I don't know, I kinda agree with some of the "white knights" to an extent. The change was made to improve the experience for new players, and people getting around the change they implemented is technically an exploit. There should be a solution for both newbies and veterans, like the other people mentioned about having a check when players join that says either "hey there's a newbie, cutscenes are unskippable" or "hey, everyone here beat this already, cutscenes are skippable."

Something actually does need to be done about this though, because here's what happened in a DF MSQ roulette I ran earlier: A newbie player was votekicked by vets because they wouldn't d/c to skip the cutscenes. That's really, really shitty to punish people if they don't "voluntarily" ruin their own experience. Needless to say I reported the whole instance.

[Mixt]

Yep, classic example of people being evil douchenozzles right there.

Hope they get banned. What they did there is NOT OKAY.

[kikix12]

I don't see how the fact that it can happen by accident, makes it "not an exploit" if you do it deliberately.

This have nothing to do with each other. It's not an exploit not because it can happen on accident, but because it does not match the definition. Yes, I'll use the definition you offered. Though I shouldn't have to, seeing as it never said anything more than I already did...so I basically already answered it.

It's exploiting the way that cutscenes are triggered (approach point X, cutscene activates, the system ticks it as 'done' and won't replay/resume it if you drop out and reconnect). By doing that deliberately to get around the enforced playback of cutscenes, and continue playing when you should not be able to, that is an exploit.

That is entirely wrong. You do not exploit anything. Why?!

1) The cutscene being skipped is as designed.
2) The Alt + F4 is Windows function, not game function. The game does not stop it (and it shouldn't, it's emergency shutdown necessary to protect computer for harmful effects of bugs etc, among others, or when someone really needs to leave "this instant").
3) Neither code affects each other directly. It is a command that tells Windows to stop executing a program.

For a more in-depth...read further.

"(in a video game) the use of a bug or flaw in game design to a player’s advantage or to the disadvantage of other players."

It is a flaw in the game programming, and by doing it deliberately you are using it to your advantage, and the possible disadvantage of other players. (ie. a new player who is now missing out on the fight, and getting its dialogue out-of-order over the middle of the preceding cutscene.)

This is not a flaw in the design of the program. It does not use the program at all. For it to be Final Fantasy XIV exploit, it needs to affect how the FFXIV program is run. It does not. A program can, should and will be turned on and off by a player at any point. It is entirely a developers duty to make sure that turning it on or off through ALT+F4 won't break anything. That's because once you use that...developers cannot have any right to do anything about it, while it's not a good idea to have your code bug out from executing a fundamental function.

That is why developers themselves made systems that are meant to deal with it. The program keeps you logged in for a time to avoid using it to prevent deaths and losses in PvP and such, among others.

And you know what?! One of those systems is NOT cutscene skipping, normally. Did you know?! If you get disconnected in the middle of a cutscene after talking to an NPC, your talking to the NPC is NOT registered. You can talk with him again and get the cutscene to run again. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen any of the long cutscenes at the end of stories because I ALWAYS got disconnected during them at least once up till now.

So developers specifically chose cutscenes in dungeons to not re-trigger after a disconnection. Otherwise the unseen cutscene would auto-trigger on loading in into the instance.

Ultimately, there is no in-game effect unintended by the developers that is in any way affected by the players use of the in-game tools.


If you want to be nitpicky you can call it a Windows exploit. Using the Windows function to avoid something in another program is not it's intended functionality. But sorry, Square Enix does not own Windows. They cannot do anything based on account of you exploiting Windows. And heck, you could do it by turning off your router/modem. They don't own your router/modem either. Neither your cables that you can disconnect...and so on and so forth.


Is it an oversight on Square Enix?! Probably yes. It's still possible they actually caught it and left there on purpose for the sake of helping the queue times (they can drop the bad blood onto the players saying that "We tried to alleviate the issue, but the bad players are still bad", all the while still harvesting the bounty of these "bad players" solving their screw-up for them). But you see, there's an "oversight" and there's an "exploit".

Ultimately the point here is the use of something WITHIN Final Fantasy XIV to gain advantage in Final Fantasy XIV. But you cannot exploit turning on or turning off Final Fantasy XIV. That's just illogical. If they don't want that to be used like it is THEY need to suck it up and change how those things affect the gameplay. Square Enix. Not the players. What the players are doing is in the gray area. It is "legal", but "inappropriate". In law it is something that you cannot be penalized for when you do it, but that'd lead to a new legislature that'd make your future attempts illegal.

[Melondra]

yes it is a exploit, the dungeon was programmed so anyone in those instances could no skip the cut-scene. If you are bypassing that option by means of a exploit it can and will get your account banned, or suspended. It is against the ToS.

[Deceptus]

There should be a solution for both newbies and veterans, like the other people mentioned about having a check when players join that says either "hey there's a newbie, cutscenes are unskippable" or "hey, everyone here beat this already, cutscenes are skippable."

This is 100% the best solution but SE either can't do it (lol technical limitations /s) or won't do it (they've made a decision and are sticking to it).

No newbie bonus? You can skip the cutscenes. They don't serve a purpose at that point.

yes it is a exploit, the dungeon was programmed so anyone in those instances could no skip the cut-scene. If you are bypassing that option by means of a exploit it can and will get your account banned, or suspended. It is against the ToS.

No, the dungeons were changed to do that. They weren't programmed that way originally.

[Bigmoose85]

What's gonna happen is everyone who did this will get ban hammered lol