Please add something to FFXIV that disables 3rd party software interactions.

[HWalsh]

No. Have you every played BDO? That is the worst system ever. A friend has a spare weapon they want to give you to get you started?Well too bad, there's no private trading, and MB prices are set so he has to put it up for sale for a price you cannot pay. And even if you can, purchases are randomized along all poitential buyers, so GL sniping that item when 20other ppl want to buy it as well and it's random who gets it. it's the worst. There is already too little player interaction, taking away the private exchange of items/gil, including fc chests etc surely wont make the game any better,

Nobody is saying you can't trade.
Nobody is giving you a minimum sale amount.

Price control is a maximum sale amount and that's about all it is.

[KageTokage]

I've played games with anti-hacking/botting measures, but they were all of the oversensitive sort that would oft purge the client simply for tabbing in/out momentarily and people did start finding workarounds.

To combat RMT bots - You have to cancel any and all free trial time abilities. If every account costs $60 to start (the price of the game) then it becomes less feasible to make it work.

Even then, if it is profitable enough, people would still do it.

It's worth noting that the only type of RMT bot that utilizes free trials are the gibberish-named spam bots you hear near the aetherytes.

Any other type is using the starter edition of XIV, presumably purchased via credit card fraud.

[Gula]

So do people just think that they can beep boop some magic coding to stop it? Like, it's an easy copy paste some code to make auto clickers and other monitoring software not work?

[Nedkel]

Most ppl who parse don't ask and don't tell. They just Kick you.

Because they would be banned for doing so.


Btw SE is lazy and they are not going to do ANYTHING about bots, they dont care anymore, they take all money made in ffxiv and put it all into another useless triple A garbage that nobody is going to play a week after release. Like come on, even GMs cant ban guys running on multihack tools, you could literaly teleport GM around in circles this is a disaster, why would you expect them to do anything? On one of "these" forums, there are people who are using same cheating tools FOR MONTHS on their main accounts without any consquences, that speaks for itself.

[Keddera_StormMoon]

What the OP is asking for is fundamentally impossible to achieve.

[villadelfia]

All your combat log data is saved to your PC. Parsers simply take this file and read it real-time for you. It's not cheating, it doesn't violate the TOS, and it is a great tool to use if you want to get better...if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Now to the real point--no, you can't hide from it. You can choose to improve or not, but wanting it eliminated so you can hide subpar performance is not happening. As Fleece Johnson puts it, "The choice is yaaaaws."

I don't know where this misconception keeps coming from. FFXIV does not save combat logs to a file, and the combat log available in-game is not sufficient to calculate your DPS because DoT ticks are not represented in it. The parser that everyone uses has two options available for parsing:

1. Memory reading: This one is less accurate because it has the same issue as the in-game log, being a lack of DoT ticks.
2. Network Sniffing: This one reads the actual network packets the game sends and receives. It's not possible to detect it from within the game without installing a kernel mode driver, and it's more accurate since it can sniff the dot tick amounts from the packets. Only disadvantage is that it doesn't work when the windows firewall is enabled.

The .log file you are talking about is generated by this program, not by the game. If you don't believe me, delete the log, go hit a striking dummy without your parser running, and try to find the log that the game allegedly saves.

Is it even possible, though, from a systems engineering point of view? Things like:

• Is it possible for an application to tell whether one specific input action received is automated or human? For example FFXIV currently accepts input from Windows TSF services, which itself could possibly be considered a third party tool.
• Is it possible for an application ito hide its network traffic such that not even the operating system can inspect it? Because if the OS can inspect it, then any tool that gets Administrator priviledge necessarily will be able to inspect the traffic.
• Even if all of the above are possible in practice, what are the ramifications and impact to the system while the game is running? Would FFXIV have to literally take over the whole system and the only way to interact with anything other than FFXIV is to log-off and close FFXIV?

I suppose if FFXIV is ran inside a sandbox pre-configured by Square Enix to allow only FFXIV to run, it may be possible? But I feel this is going beyond what a game company is capable of and is more likely done for software that requires the highest security, for example financial institute authentication service applications.

Well, they could close down many avenues of botting...

• They could disable input from a non-physical device... But that would completely break the game for people needing accessibility features, and dedicated botters could and would make kernel drivers to mimic a physical device. And even if they made that impossible, it would be cheap to make an actual physical device that's controlled by bot software.
• They could limit where and how the game can be run by for example having anti-vm detection and only allowing the game to run in true fullscreen... But that would be a dreadful play experience for legit players, and it could be worked around by kernel hooks. And many virus scanners automatically detect anti-vm measures as malicious behavior.
• They could disable trading, but then they would just use the marketboard to sell gil... And if that was made impossible too, it would severely impact real players...

The moral of the story is that every measure has a countermeasure, and while it would indeed affect bots... It would only do so until they have worked around the issue, while real players have to deal with it forever. Bots are perfectly content to put in the work to keep their cash flow going, and all their tactics exist because they work. They wouldn't be spamming the main cities and the novice network if that didn't get them sales.

[Josco]

I don't know where this misconception keeps coming from. FFXIV does not save combat logs to a file, and the combat log available in-game is not sufficient to calculate your DPS because DoT ticks are not represented in it. The parser that everyone uses has two options available for parsing:

1. Memory reading: This one is less accurate because it has the same issue as the in-game log, being a lack of DoT ticks.
2. Network Sniffing: This one reads the actual network packets the game sends and receives. It's not possible to detect it from within the game without installing a kernel mode driver, and it's more accurate since it can sniff the dot tick amounts from the packets. Only disadvantage is that it doesn't work when the windows firewall is enabled.

The .log file you are talking about is generated by this program, not by the game. If you don't believe me, delete the log, go hit a striking dummy without your parser running, and try to find the log that the game allegedly saves.

Documents/My Games/FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn/ FFXIV_CHR[character code]/log

The parser has never been perfect at reading dots because it has to estimate crits and such...UNLESS you're using one of the more invasive types you're talking about, and I do not know one single person who uses those. Those ARE potentially against the ToS, and the difference between what you get from that and what you get from reading the logs (or yes...the temporary information in memory which is destined for a log file) is so miniscule it is not worth the risk or hassle.

Parsing programs are going to generate their own log file, but the data is still saved to your PC. People need to chill...and also stop spreading misinformation.

[noxen]

just gonnie quote that one guys signature i see on these forums frequently.



"A parser in itself is not toxic because it just shows facts and facts are never toxic.
Toxicity occours when facts get handled between people and how the facts get formed and transfered."

legit nothing wrong with damage meters and parsers. its not my cuppa tea personally, y'all do you. the mantra of "dont be a dick" couldn't be stronger when it comes to things like parsing tho.

[Granyala]

Documents/My Games/FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn/ FFXIV_CHR[character code]/log

No clue what those logs are supposed to be but they are not combat logs. They are far too small and they contain a lot of data that doesn't belong in combat logs.

[Videra]

The vocal minority of the anti-parser groups flare up every once in a while, especially at the start of new content.

Pretty much this. Just ignore them, it's better for your sanity.