ToS Question on Discord Bots, etc.

[tdb]

Cheating involves getting an unfair advantage, this is not an unfair advantage as you can actually do that without a third party program.

You simply filter your battle log to only actions initiated by the enemy, pop out the tab and move it somewhere easily visible, now you can see every time Ozma is about to switch forms, as this is recorded in the battle log before the animation begins.

That will give you a message of all of Ozma's attacks though, not just the shape shifting. You can configure the chat window to give an audible alert, but it will be dinging constantly and you can't tell when you should react in which way.

External combat trackers, on the other hand, can give alerts on only specific enemy abilities, or they can give different alerts for different abilities. They can use timers to give an alert five seconds before the ability begins (provided the fight is predictable enough, but quite a lot of boss fights are). I'm having trouble remembering when the tankbusters in O10S occur and such an alert program would help with that. I won't do it though because it would be cheating.

[Dualgunner]

That will give you a message of all of Ozma's attacks though, not just the shape shifting. You can configure the chat window to give an audible alert, but it will be dinging constantly and you can't tell when you should react in which way.

External combat trackers, on the other hand, can give alerts on only specific enemy abilities, or they can give different alerts for different abilities. They can use timers to give an alert five seconds before the ability begins (provided the fight is predictable enough, but quite a lot of boss fights are). I'm having trouble remembering when the tankbusters in O10S occur and such an alert program would help with that. I won't do it though because it would be cheating.

Likewise you can have party members calling that out based on a timeline and muscle memory of the mechanics themselves. In fact, all of the groups I've been in have had people call out mechanics, and most raiders I know make sure they have a good shotcaller in their group; mixed stimuli (sound + sight) allows for easier learning and memorization.

Is it right to use machines to do the sounds for you instead of raid members? I'm not gonna make a call there. Personally I think I would prefer having a shotcaller to having ACT do it for me, having never done the latter. But I can see the use of some things, such as setting it to sound off when Trick Attack goes up so the airwaves aren't filled with unnecessary chatter. As well, some fights this expansion do very much the same thing with voice-queued lines when they attack; Susano, Byakko, Tsuki, Suzaku, and Seiryu come to mind with voice lines signifying major mechanical happenings, and I can appreciate giving us sound cues as well in fights like this.

In Ultimate, I use the music itself to tell me what's going to happen because past Garuda, every song is normalized to the fight's timeline due to the fact that there is no variable start time.

[AleXwern]

Likewise you can have party members calling that out based on a timeline and muscle memory of the mechanics themselves. In fact, all of the groups I've been in have had people call out mechanics, and most raiders I know make sure they have a good shotcaller in their group; mixed stimuli (sound + sight) allows for easier learning and memorization.

Is it right to use machines to do the sounds for you instead of raid members? I'm not gonna make a call there. Personally I think I would prefer having a shotcaller to having ACT do it for me, having never done the latter. But I can see the use of some things, such as setting it to sound off when Trick Attack goes up so the airwaves aren't filled with unnecessary chatter. As well, some fights this expansion do very much the same thing with voice-queued lines when they attack; Susano, Byakko, Tsuki, Suzaku, and Seiryu come to mind with voice lines signifying major mechanical happenings, and I can appreciate giving us sound cues as well in fights like this.

In Ultimate, I use the music itself to tell me what's going to happen because past Garuda, every song is normalized to the fight's timeline due to the fact that there is no variable start time.

Myself, months and months after the tier become irrelevant, I will still know when Kefka is about to use Hyperdrive/change mechanics to a second based on position of the music. I don't see the issue with ACT callouts because the fights are so incredibly scripted in this game, the mechanics will be melded to your backbone anyway even before you have ended your prog. I'm like callout bot myself when I raid.

[Dualgunner]

Myself, months and months after the tier become irrelevant, I will still know when Kefka is about to use Hyperdrive/change mechanics to a second based on position of the music. I don't see the issue with ACT callouts because the fights are so incredibly scripted in this game, the mechanics will be melded to your backbone anyway even before you have ended your prog. I'm like callout bot myself when I raid.

I don't doubt it for a second. Multiple stimuli and human capacity for recognizing patterns (both auditory and visual) make for some strong mnemonic devices.

[tdb]

Is it right to use machines to do the sounds for you instead of raid members? I'm not gonna make a call there. Personally I think I would prefer having a shotcaller to having ACT do it for me, having never done the latter. But I can see the use of some things, such as setting it to sound off when Trick Attack goes up so the airwaves aren't filled with unnecessary chatter. As well, some fights this expansion do very much the same thing with voice-queued lines when they attack; Susano, Byakko, Tsuki, Suzaku, and Seiryu come to mind with voice lines signifying major mechanical happenings, and I can appreciate giving us sound cues as well in fights like this.

If someone can remember the timeline of the fight and do callouts from memory, then they are a good player that deserve to do well. Since clearing difficult fights is a team effort, it's fair for the team to make the most of the skills of its members. This is how the game is intended to work.

Someone using a combat tracker for the callouts is augmenting their inferior skill with external means. That's pretty much the definition of cheating. If a chess player was using a chess program to suggest or check moves in a tournament, they would be cheating.

The difference between chess and FFXIV is that competitive chess has a fairly rigid set of rules which are agreed upon on an international level. FFXIV is for the most part not played competitively, so someone cheating ultimately has little or no impact on the player base in general. I'm not aware of any written set of rules for raiding either, aside from the rather ambiguous terms of service. However I do take a dim view of people who brag about how good they are if they are that good only with the help of external tools.