In opposition of the inability to move waymarks in combat.

[Darkpaw]

I mean you are not wrong. In any sense of your post. I’ve felt the same as I am sure many others have as well.

This step was inevitable. We are lucky just this system got changed, this change is a inconvenience for sure but ultimately it’s necessary to draw a line in the sand and say no more. And that is what they did. No lewd mods, no add ons that inject data into the game and add server load. Play by the rules or get called out and punished.

We have all dealt with this idea of a few bad apples cost everyone everything. It’s not a new or controversial thing. Happens all the time.

[Mikana]

I understand square's position on this, it is after all a fix to people exploiting a tool that gives an unfair advantage, still doesn't change the fact that it is also an inconveniance to people that makes strat relying on the ability to move waymarks.

If it comes to pass and they don't ever change, then so be it, we'll learn to adapt, but it is still a worst system than before for the user.

And to those saying it's not fair but you have to accept it. Doesn't mean I don't have the right to make my point of view clear for square, if they decide to ignore, so be it, it is a good thing for them after all.

But at this point, with the fact that they've shown that you could have multiple presets for each fights (edit : might only be 5 presets TOTAL, but unsure with it being japanese and all), i would be okay with the posibility of switching each presets within the combat (which is kinda what the tool that started this drama is doing).

So they've got 3 possibilites :
- Remove the function to move waymarks in combat (me, as a user doesn't like it)
- Let it be as it was before (which would be bad for Square as it leads to people exploiting the game with tools)
- Compromise and give the ability to switch presets in combat (as a user, i'd be fine with that, but that means implementing a tool that cheaters already had before to everyone, so i do not know if square would really accept it)

In the end, it is all going to depend on square's decision, what is good to me isn't what is neccessarily good to square, and as such i understand their point of view on the matter.

Why people tolerated those, was that it never affected other people (i don't care if other cheats outside of my static, i do the content for myself not for the others)
But this is a change affecting me, so now i care and if square can at least aknowledge my point of view as a user, then this is good enough for me

[WasephVoxx]

I can't believe what is happening in this thread. You guys rather advocate for 100% of the playerbase to be punished for the actions of 0.01%. You can blame the community all you want for "bringing this upon themselves" but let's call this what it is: The devs are taking the easy path of restricting a feature that has been there since the beginning because they are too lazy to actually figure out a way to punish people for literally cheating.

Yes, this is, in essence, the fault of the players that abuse the system but you don't have to lie there and take such a ridiculous solution when the real answer should be in making sure people risk their accounts when they commit so heavily to 3rd party tools.

Where does this end? People will find other loopholes and do it again and we'll just end up with less and less features? No, just hit the desk for once and punish obvious, gross disregard for the ToS PLEASE. This shouldn't even be up for debate.

[Billythepancake]

If you could cycle through presets the cheating tool would be literally irrelevant. This was a simple solution, but they're taking the worst way out they possibly can. The best way to tackle cheaters is to make the cheating more of a hassle than doing it legit. It's the same way as piracy. Pirating hit a decline for games with the growth of steam and the growth of Netflix caused a decline in movie piracy because it was just more convenient and safer to get the things legitimately.

[SaberMaxwell]

If you could cycle through presets the cheating tool would be literally irrelevant. This was a simple solution, but they're taking the worst way out they possibly can. The best way to tackle cheaters is to make the cheating more of a hassle than doing it legit. It's the same way as piracy. Pirating hit a decline for games with the growth of steam and the growth of Netflix because it was just more convenient and safer to get the things legitimately.

I can't like this post enough.

The most frustrating part is, the solution is so simple that they actually implemented it with those presets, but broke it on purpose. They monkey's paw'd us hard, and I'm just so... livid about the whole thing.

Someone on Discord said it best: they started an arms race with 3rd party users that they cannot win.

[ForteNightshade]

If you could cycle through presets the cheating tool would be literally irrelevant. This was a simple solution, but they're taking the worst way out they possibly can. The best way to tackle cheaters is to make the cheating more of a hassle than doing it legit. It's the same way as piracy. Pirating hit a decline for games with the growth of steam and the growth of Netflix caused a decline in movie piracy because it was just more convenient and safer to get the things legitimately.

Meanwhile, you have Facebook loudly and proudly declaring they killed Adblock with their new million dollar technology... only to be humiliated two days later. SE cannot win a third party battle because they won't dare risk killing their raid scene by doing anything drastic like blocking parsers. So it's immediately a lost battle. There's already talks it'll become client side.

[Brightamethyst]

They should have taken the time to break the app rather than punish the other 99.99% of the players. This is going to hurt all the regular players much more than it hurts the very small handful of cheaters.

[Angary]

Came here hoping this thread would exist, and it does, which is great.

This change is awful for everyone who tried to do everything above-the-board, and the initial reaction from the people behind the tool that prompted it was just that they'd make a version that everyone can run that just cheats locally with client-side way marks. It's ultimately not going to get people who were using this tool to cheat to play legit, they're just going to cheat harder. The people who lose out are literally the entire rest of the playerbase who persist in not cheating, and that's not great. Adding more waymarks so people can just pre-mark everything is an option, I guess, but it's a lot messier visually and it's open to way more abuse (There's a clear waymark button--you don't think that's 'accidentally' getting hit right before a pull in 24 mans to troll everyone? Really?)

I appreciate the urge to crack down on the growing prevalence and unfortunate acceptance of tools that allow for automation of what were intended to be manually handled game mechanics, but punishing the people who were doing it right in the first place is a bad look. As mentioned in the OP, people who can place way marks while keeping up with the demands of their job mid-pull have a valid skill worth recognizing, and instead it's getting wiped out. The community will adapt to the change, but given the existence of things like the tool that would place party markers on people for Titan Gaol, the precedent of 'cheaters abuse it, so all will lose it' could eventually scale out to touching other features and it really, really doesn't need to.

We should absolutely have at least one way mark we could place in combat, for on-the-fly positioning explanations. Yes, it's open to abuse by third party tools, but the people using those for hardcore early prog aren't going to stop using them with this change anyway, so why punish the rest of us contentedly progressing slower without the assist?

[ForteNightshade]

I mean you are not wrong. In any sense of your post. I’ve felt the same as I am sure many others have as well.

This step was inevitable. We are lucky just this system got changed, this change is a inconvenience for sure but ultimately it’s necessary to draw a line in the sand and say no more. And that is what they did. No lewd mods, no add ons that inject data into the game and add server load. Play by the rules or get called out and punished.

We have all dealt with this idea of a few bad apples cost everyone everything. It’s not a new or controversial thing. Happens all the time.

Except none of that is going anywhere. Do you think people using mods weren't aware they were against the ToS? People did it anyway just like with parsers. And given mods are client side, literally nothing has changed as SE has no way to detect whether you have lewd mods installed. The creator of the marker tool has already said they'll make it client side.

This is a losing battle because they aren't going to do anything to disrupt client side programs and risk the backlash banning parsers would cause.

[Darkpaw]

Except none of that is going anywhere. Do you think people using mods weren't aware they were against the ToS? People did it anyway just like with parsers. And given mods are client side, literally nothing has changed as SE has no way to detect whether you have lewd mods installed. The creator of the marker tool has already said they'll make it client side.

This is a losing battle because they aren't going to do anything to disrupt client side programs and risk the backlash banning parsers would cause.

Losing battle or not isn’t the point. The game has grown quite a lot since shadowbringers, and continues to do so. The dev team had to take a stand on where the line is. They’ve made it clear.

Everyone says this alternative is so easy it’s this it’s that, or this is the wrong or worse way to go about it. That’s false. The worse way they could have gone about it is to change ToS to allow for a scan of any files attached to their game (which they admitted was illegal and arent going to do) as for affecting 99.9% of the playerbase. Outside of niche situations. Nael, TEA, UCoB most waymarks are placed pre-battle and not touched again during any pull post wipe.

So no this doesn’t really affect the player base at large in any meaningful negative way. In fact presets and additional waymarks are more positive.

The sky isn’t falling the game isn’t breaking for dealing with this convenient add on to a third party program that wasnt even available to everyone. It’s against ToS it always has been. Least they were up front and told it to everyone rather than just dropping the ban hammer without warning. Better to take the blanket solution then try to play whack a mole with every person that abuses the system or cheats to get ahead.

So stop acting like it’s a personal sleight and insult that SE is holding the community accountable. It’s life and this is a game. They were well within their rights to make this decision and in this instance they likely will not back down.