Concerns about useage of 3rd party applications

[Delily]

The official stance makes sense if you understand Square can't dictate the applications you install on your computer. They could in theory put a rootkit on that detects ACT, but those are always found out and disabled. (Think nProtect GameGuard and PSO2).

ACT is a packet sniffer that will decode specific packets, analyze them, and display the result. I could run a tool like Wireshark and it has the same underlying effect. Plus if I were a more ambitious engineer, I could write a similar program. All the modding programs simply change the DAT files. At the end of the day, it's my computer and what I run on it is my choice.

What Square is ultimately concerned about are third-party applications that modify the information being sent to the servers. Speed hacks, item dupes, etc. The thing is, it's far too expensive on their end to analyze all the various tools out there, so they issue the blanket statement of "No third party applications." Additionally, they care more about how the third-party application impacts the online experience. Obviously speed hacks, automation tools, and item dupes are just cheating, plain and simple. With ACT, as many have said, it's not about using it, it's about using it to harass other players. Even if you say you use ACT, I doubt Square will do much because they can't really prove it's anything other than a claim. Maybe a warning, maybe a temporary ban. At the end of the day, so long as you don't harass other players and don't cheat, it's not worth the effort to go after you.

[Sotaris]

Don't ask don't tell.

[TaleraRistain]

The deal with any 3rd party app is don't ask, don't tell. If it isn't mentioned in game as being used, they can't prove anyone is using it. So they are against the ToS but they're limited in actions that can be taken since they won't act on things outside the game.

Now if this person is killing mobs consistently deliberately to refuse others the chance, then you could submit a report on that behavior and see if anything happens. Because they would be able to tell in game at least how the person was intentionally griefing.

[Drakonic]

Soooo Square Enix will never comment on this but the community has basically GUESSED that as long you do not use them to mess with other players they do not seem to care. Multiple Twitch streamers that are world first actively have them on the screen and Square Enix is not stupid enough to think that [UNLIKE PUREMALLACE I'M NOT LINKING TO IT] is not a real thing.

The same guy who makes [CENSORED] makes that site also so lets not pretend this is not widely known. If you have an assumption someone is abusing it then go ahead and report.

Wow did you link to it directly? Aren't your medals precious?

[Absurdity]

Now if this person is killing mobs consistently deliberately to refuse others the chance, then you could submit a report on that behavior and see if anything happens. Because they would be able to tell in game at least how the person was intentionally griefing.

Unlikely for anything to happen. We had the same ~4 people ninja pulling S-ranks for the entirety of Stormblood, even the ones that someone else spent who knows how many hours on to spawn. Pretty safe to assume that they were using some kind of 3rd party software since they would sit in Limsa, or other zones that weren't connected to the spawn location, for hours until an S-rank was spawned. Then as soon as one spawned they'd show up within a minute, without it even being announced anywhere, immediately pull and start killing it.


Nothing ever happened to them, despite actively gloating in chat.

[Puremallace]

Wow did you link to it directly? Aren't your medals precious?

I get forum banned like every other 3 days for random stuff. It happens. Someday I hope to prompt a response from Square Enix on these important issues that they keep leaving in grey areas. I think far too long term to be concerned about medals.

Either Square makes an actual policy regarding this issue or they put out a statement with guidelines. They cannot enforce it based on the community literally guessing how it works or how it is actually enforced based on straw man examples.

Everything we know about this issue is from educated guesses with ZEROOOOOOOOOOOOOO pushback from a single Square Enix dev or employee over 7 years of knowing this is happening. Comments in this thread should tell you what the issue is on this. New players have no clue what the policy is.

[Sotaris]

Surprised you not perma banned. My old account got perma banned (on forum)after 2 or 3 forum bans lol

[SannaR]

Act and tools used to do Bard performance are don't ask don't tell and unless they're used to harass people SE tends to turn a blind eye. You would need solid proof for things dealing with hunts as the rules the community makes for its self isn't what SE goes by. Those who do hunts and operate the trains have had a hard time getting crappy people taken care of. As SE's stance on it is no one has to shout out, relink or even spawn a hunt marker. Nor do they have to wait for anyone else to arrive. So, even if you highly suspect someone of cheating where it concerns the Hunt the likelihood of something to come from reporting cheating most likely won't happen.

[Risvertasashi]

This may be a silly question because I'm getting conflicting stories in the game about the useage of ACT and Cactbot which I'm pretty sure counts as a 3rd party application which could result in being banned if someone has been suspected and later proven being used, so I really need to know what SE's stance is on Cactbot being used for tracking elite marks. I've tried arguing against a hunt community over whether or not a player suspected of using it to instantly locate and kill elite marks could be reported for cheating or not and all I'm hearing is stuff like this:

"never will happen, since the tool doesnt not interupt game as itself or interfere with server"
"havent heard about anybody who got banned by using radar, you cant ever prove anybody is using radar, SE dont care about cactbot usage at all, nobody got reprimanded since 2.1"
"all those modders who mod ffxivs 3d models, only those who boasted about using them on social media got their temp bans, everybody else still lives on"
"if he shames someone by boasting it himself of using said 3rd party software, then maybe, otherwise nothing will ever happen"

I'm only asking because I strongly suspect someone on our datacenter is using Cactbot to locate elite hunt marks and is deliberately griefing players by instantly killing them on arrival whether he spawned them or not, and if it's a bannable offense to be using it then I want to report him for cheating. Can I really get someone investigated if I reported that I strongly suspected they were using cheats to disrupt other peoples' gameplay?

Sadly, the usual video interview with Yoshida I liked to link for this seems to have been marked private... but it basically goes like this.

The official line from dev teams will be to not use any third party apps/addons/mods/tools with FFXIV, and if you do and they find out about it, they will take action against your account.

In practice, it's a don't ask don't tell policy. Something passive/informational can't be detected without SE installing a scanner on your computer, which they don't want to do, so as long as you never talk about it in game, nothing will ever happen to you.

Now a "bot" program that autonomously sends input to the server can theoretically be detected and get you banned if SE notices certain patterns to the bot's inputs that distinguish it from a player. In practice this seems to be hit and miss - some people on the forums will claim they never get banned, but they do and get removed from pvp or crafting rankings - but probably some get away with it, but to use it at all is a big risk to the user's account. Whereas for a parser/raid callouts/etc, all they have to do is keep their mouth shut.

Still, the absolute safest thing is to not use any at all per the policy. But if you're hoping the silent masses of parser users and so on have a ban coming... Well, the anti-parser crowd has been waiting for that for 8 years and counting.

[Dragonblanco]

I'll just quote Yoshi P from a while back. Check it out

And also… as we were looking into this, we were looking into the ‘’modders’’ side on where it’s ‘’ok’’ or ‘’NG (not good)’’ and we were at the point where it was like ‘’Yoshida approves of the mod culture’’ kind of deal. But the thing with ‘’mod culture’’, besides being a culture, it’s not really a good or a bad thing. So if we talk about what ‘’mods’’ are, let’s say there is a game and someone made a map that did not exist in the game, something for everyone to enjoy, the mod creator worked really hard to create the graphic data and then uploaded onto the internet for everyone to enjoy in a sense of ‘’let’s all play on this map!’’, there were these kinds of cases. And technically speaking, this is a violation of the ToS, though the ToS in games varies and are of course different. But for example, in FFXIV, the remodeling or alteration of data and um… reverse engineering, ‘’Don’t do it’’ is the rule, um, so it’s ‘’NOT allowed’’ and if you ask if it’s okay, it’s ‘’NOT allowed’’. However, if this ‘’map’’ within the fan community became really big and popular, because it’s really fun, the balance was really well made, this map made the game even more exciting and fun, as anyone could play on this map, this in fact made the game even bigger than before; there are cases like this. In that scenario, a certain game developer said ‘’Okay, let’s give this the official recognition!’’, even though it’s actually against ToS, you look away, because the community is really loving and enjoying it, and there are cases where they make mods like this official. This is what you call ‘’mod culture’’. Something where it makes the game grow and the technology to grow. There was indeed a case like this in reality. Well more specifically, there was a game called Half-Life, a mod called ‘’Counter-Strike’’ was made and rules were made for that. This in every sense of the word, exploded in popularity all around the world and probably even immensely boosted the sales of Half-Life as well. So it was like ‘’The rules, let’s change it’’. I think it got the point where CS was even more popular than HL