Concerns about useage of 3rd party applications

[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

[Dragonblanco]

So yeah, you're kind of seeing where officially not allowed but it's all about how much it interferes with the game and other players.

So like, while playing FFXIV, using Discord, talking to friends who are far away, or like talking to your girlfriend, or your parents, if you ask us if THIS is okay, then it’s like I guess that’s fine. So like, at the end of the day, it stands on the point of the ‘’use’’ and the nuance becomes very difficult. So speaking in that perspective, there is a tool called ACT, and what ACT is, it’s called Advanced Combat Tracker. The most base function of this tool, the base function when simply just installed, when in a battle, in the chat log, there is the battle log right? Like, ‘’Morbol took XXX amount of damage’’ etc. It’s simply just adding all those numbers as they roll out. But… it’s not modifying anything, eh… it’s not remodeling anything, it’s also not… hacking the memory data… eh… even if you tell us it’s just a calculator… but you know… if we are talking about ‘’external tools’’, it’s an ‘’external tool’’. So, it’s bad, you can’t use it. ALRIGHT THEN! In that case, I’ll get a calculator and put it in front of me. Playing FFXIV with one hand and with extreme vigor on the other… (Morbol: You become superman)… Yeah. But you can’t, it’s impossible right. ‘’Then what!?’’ and if asked if a calculator is an external tool, then it’s like, I don’t friggin know, don’t ask(!) (laughs)

[Dragonblanco]

And just kind of rebuilding what he said and their limitations on enforcing the rules

Yes… though… I think you would know if you thought about it. And also, we sometimes get reports from people where someone is using these tools in a video… and frankly speaking, we honestly don’t know. It might appear as so, in appearance, but like they could just say that it’s the CPU temp and if they don’t make it look like that, they won’t know their CPU temps… So like what the hell do we do? Like we can’t exactly take their PC and investigate it. So like, just as we said earlier, if you take the data coming to the PC and you process that on a calculator, that’s not affecting the server, we can’t even trace it. And if we install a spyware in the FFXIV client to investigate what the user is doing, WE will be sued. Yeah.

[Dragonblanco]

I know, it was a long speech...I could just link to one of the Reddit with the entire things, but meh, putting here for people who hop on to read.

Continuing on, sorry, just a little bit more. Going back to ACT, it has a function where you can add plugins and with this, you can add ‘’expansions’’. And these expansions, are not part of ACT itself, but are creations form further third parties. And such expansions, destroy game balance and it goes in the game memory, and it does bad things, and from our perspective, there are much more malicious ones as well. And in regards to this, we are very serious and the moment we find evidence, the risks of penalties is extremely high and we want you to understand this. Please keep this in mind. Even on our side, we have preventions, actually we started since around 4.0 and we actually added security to the data packets of certain actions so that players can’t decipher it. This was to observe how the plugin creators reacted and responded. And we are changing the methods continuously…. And… we want you to stop. Basically, we set the rewards based on the game balance…. And so we want this to stop.

[Dragonblanco]

Ok, final bit from that interview and has your official answer, though you saw where he was pushing grey area before

Recently a tool was made to ‘’show’’ the attack range/cone of an attack that is not supposed to show any. And this depending on some people, was a very serious issue. Like ‘’you can see every action now!’’. But actually, that’s not quite like that. It’s specifically made, JUST for that one attack, so when the attack comes, they made a visual data that would show the range of the attack. Like, REALLY? You made this JUST for this one attack? … I was REALLY shocked. So like they traced the exact range of cone and made a tool JUST for this one move. Like what the HELL are you doing? So talking about the seriousness of this… it’s not a tool that will make the game an open book, but it’s made with an immense amount of dedication and patience. So when the next savage comes and if you think that this will allow you to see everything, it’s not like that at all. But it’s possible to make one for each and every move, but for that, in the worst case, its data modification in a sense, even though it’s just for that one move, so like it’s completely BLACK. So if we find usage of that, we will immediately throw out penalties. So even just simply calling it a tool, there are tools which give user convenience and like taking a peek inside and moving some things…. Like tools which allows you to macro buttons for faster actions and like we just talked about, tools which goes beyond breaking the game balance, it gives too much convenience and tools which breaks the games difficulty, there is just no way we can accept this. In regards to these, it’s not allowed and if we find you using it and distributing it, penalties will be done. We want to strongly warn you about this.

[Dragonblanco]

Sorry, I'd like to have put it all here but limited characters per response. I'm cherry picking from transcripts but trying to hit the key points.

Also, one more thing. Talking about tools. Well… recently… especially at the forefront of 5.0 and soon thereafter, we saw a huge boost in the number of players and with that, the definition of ‘’tools’’ became increasingly messy to say the least. It’s kind of getting to the point of collapse in regards to tools… so we would like to clearly address this. Well first of all, this goes without saying and it’s also often addressed, um… the use of external tools is ‘’prohibited’’ and this is what’s written in the ToS. And so if in the case that you ask us if it’s okay to use external tools, out reply will always be ‘’No’’, it’s ‘’NG’’, please don’t use them. In the worst case scenario, there is a possibility that your account will be suspended. Such penalties are definitely possible, so please do not use such tools; this will be our response. However, going further into this one word ‘’tool’’, well, in the perspective of us engineers, well… for example… (sigh) we have Discord right? It’s a voice chat ‘’tool’’ yeah? Well it’s fine to call it a voice chat ‘’application’’ anyways and if you ask what the difference is between a ‘’tool’’ and an ‘’application’’, there is no clear definition for that.

[Drakonic]

Sorry, I'd like to have put it all here but limited characters per response. I'm cherry picking from transcripts but trying to hit the key points.

So yeah, you're kind of seeing where officially not allowed but it's all about how much it interferes with the game and other players.

So as officially it's no, grey is still grey

And just kind of rebuilding what he said and their limitations on enforcing the rules

I know, it was a long speech...I could just link to one of the Reddit with the entire things, but meh, putting here for people who hop on to read.

Ok, final bit from that interview and has your official answer, though you saw where he was pushing grey area before

There's a very nifty forum feature called Edit, which you can use to edit your post. Just thought you should be aware!

[Dragonblanco]

There's a very nifty forum feature called Edit, which you can use to edit your post. Just thought you should be aware!

I edit when I have to edit. See...there's such a thing called "character limit" where you can only type so much. Now, if you'd like to rephrase things like MilkieTea said,

you can circumvent the character limit by posting a few words and then editing that post with the full quote.

I mean, I assume that's what you meant? or what about editing?

[SannaR]

I edit when I have to edit. See...there's such a thing called "character limit" where you can only type so much. Now, if you'd like to rephrase things like MilkieTea said,



I mean, I assume that's what you meant? or what about editing?

When anyone on these forums talk about editing a post they almost always mean bypassing the character limit of a post. There is also a daily post limit. It's why people who are in a debate over things will edit their last post of they've hit their daily limit. It's rare for people to grumble about a person's grammar on here unless they write a non stop wall of text.