FFXIV Devs: Please STOP punishing normal players for others breaking the rules.

[technole]

Who actually changes waymarks in combat? You don't have the time.

This seems like a 100% improvement to me.

Found a person who probably never sets makers in hard content.

T9 Savage and UCoB have the dragons that are never in the same clock position at-least twice in the phase. Someone looks on how they positioned and puts up markers for the safe bait areas.

A6 Savage, just one long gauntlet fight. That fight is in-combat the whole time despite killing one robot and going up the stairs to fight the next robot. The change screws that fight, and any future ones with that design. You really needed to set new markers for Vortexer the most for the ice and lightning stack drops.

[QT_Melon]

The tool that places waymarks does not rely on ACT. You can set it up to allow it to be remotely controlled by other applications, such as ACT. Also ACT does not decipher any data, that's done by a plugin too.

Your idea of getting rid of ACT also doesn't take into account that ACT can be used with other games where it's perfectly fine to use it. In general, I think they've taken the right approach as it would simply cost too much money to try to block it and I think they know it. They could've decided to catch the people using the waymark placing tool, but opted not to for some reason, and that would be infinitely cheaper than trying to block ACT.

They actually may be in the works of blocking it. They're not gonna block ACT itself. Just likely they're working on the detecting on the injection of client data. They probably just did the all out waymark ban, to make sure someone doesn't produce a workaround and does it again. That would also go for the AOEs being made visible.

[Seraphor]

Found a person who probably never sets makers in hard content.

T9 Savage and UCoB have the dragons that are never in the same clock position at-least twice in the phase. Someone looks on how they positioned and puts up markers for the safe bait areas.

A6 Savage, just one long gauntlet fight. That fight is in-combat the whole time despite killing one robot and going up the stairs to fight the next robot. The change screws that fight, and any future ones with that design. You really needed to set new markers for Vortexer the most for the ice and lightning stack drops.

Those are both before my time and I haven't had an opportunity to go back and revisit those yet.
But in my experience, if you have multiple phases or potential markers you need, then you simply place those markers at the start.
We now have two extra markers to allow you to plan for those eventualities. E.g. either marker 3 or marker 4 will be safe, someone calls out which one at the time.

[Seraphor]

In Ultimate, where the battlefield and mechanics change drastically between phases, the ability to switch waymark positioning on the fly was a pretty nice feature.

I haven't done Ultimate, but with content that severely punishes you for missing a single GCD, how is this even possible?

[technole]

Those are both before my time and I haven't had an opportunity to go back and revisit those yet.
But in my experience, if you have multiple phases or potential markers you need, then you simply place those markers at the start.
We now have two extra markers to allow you to plan for those eventualities. E.g. either marker 3 or marker 4 will be safe, someone calls out which one at the time.

Your experience hasn't gone far enough apparently, there are phase transition downtimes and expanding the enrage on Brute Justice/Cruise Chaser in TEA to draw out time for cool downs to come back up and manual marker setting if necessary.

Just because you have two new markers you'll lose the ability to have unique markers for phase 1 and inner circle mechanics. Which for fights like TEA people would use for Limit Cut. Or UCoB where they will take the Twintania stacks. Also for the phase 2 divebombs, there are proper, orderly numbers so you won't confuse who will dive first.

Some of UCoB's phase 2 dive-bomb patterns, markers they are placed in the order of dives, without an orderly numbers you can confuse which dives go 2nd and 3rd because it's not always by direction.

[QT_Melon]

I haven't done Ultimate, but with content that severely punishes you for missing a single GCD, how is this even possible?

There are phases where there's nothing to hit. The boss has basically jumped. You're not going to miss a GCD, but you do have limited time to identify spots that are safe for the next mechanic

[Seraphor]

Some of UCoB's phase 2 dive-bomb patterns, markers they are placed in the order of dives, without an orderly numbers you can confuse which dives go 2nd and 3rd because it's not always by direction.

Looking at those diagrams... every possible marker would appear to roughly line up with a cardinal direction, and as we now have 8 markers, you can cover them all.
Pattern 1: NW > SE > SW
Pattern 2: NE > S > N
Pattern 3: NW > E > SW

[technole]

Looking at those diagrams... every possible marker would appear to roughly line up with a cardinal direction, and as we now have 8 markers, you can cover them all.
Pattern 1: NW > SE > SW
Pattern 2: NE > S > N
Pattern 3: NW > E > SW

There are 4 examples here out of several. You're also forgetting the fact you'll need two markers for the center safe spots from the earlier phase. Once again, you are just throwing something without knowing the fight in-general.

[Brightamethyst]

And it's not just about the hardest of content either. Especially in non-savage/ultimate content there are very few situations where the correct answer is "more waymarks." Fights that take place on multiple platforms, fights where safe spots aren't always in the same place, fights where you don't realize new people don't know mechanics until halfway through, etc.

[Commander_Justitia]

Are player markings (1,2,3, cc1,cc2, ignore1 etc.) next?
Even though this change is aimed at reducing the gap between people who use plugins and people who don't...
In the end this change will just make it bigger again, the remaining plugins will get more complex in offering help/advise/strategies while raiding, meanwhile legit players are still fighting without being able to set a waymark during the fight.