Increasing number of players using 3rd party tools

[TheRealQuah]

Add ons aren't limited to cosmetics. World of Warcraft has a alot of add ons that read incoming packets and create logistic signals to basically walk you through every mechanic in the game, sometimes making you aware of mechanics before there's even any visual indication. Reading through some of this thread it sounds like ACT has plugins with similar functions. WoWs dedicated modding community could probably expand on that considerably.

I don't even really care since I don't plan to do progression in this game; and if I did I wouldn't mind using add ons anyways (I used them all the time in WoW). I'm just stating the obvious; Mods can be crazy performance enhancers and if they become pervasive enough then they'll be required for serious progression in most cases.

If this was a WoW forum and that's what we were discussing I'd care about your comments.

"add ons arent just cosmetic - this other game-"

I don't care about add ons in WoW, this is FFXIV.

ACT does not have the function to make you aware of mechanics before there is any visual. It's just an advanced calculator. There was a mod out there that could do what you said, but within days, a ton of people got banned for using it, and they changed stuff in the game that completely broke it so it wouldn't work.

There are no mods that the endgame community will require people to have for progression. That will never happen. Firstly, because of console, secondly because there's nothing out there that can give you such an advantage.

[TheRealQuah]

Kinda weird since it is not real, so don't care people do that, whatever floats people boats. I guess the makers have passion and part of the chars are real to them in making the story. So it bothers them more...hey if they keep making good content with that mindset. I don't mind it.

I'm as casual as they come, and I think most casual people really don't care what raiders do or addons they use. The ones that say it is cheating or dislike it seems like a lot more because they are very loud or could be jealous console players who knows.. The only time we would have a problem, if they balance the content that we do around said addons, and they won't do it.


So if what you do and how you play will not hurt my content, or changes in the game, and I am WELL protected from being harass by players using it. I don't understand why people care, I feel like this is just a dumb sort of gatekeeping. If someone wants to use that combo addon that makes them hit the same button for a combo. Or chat bubbles. Why does that bother some people? It is weird.

Yes, SquareEnix have morals and away of working which means they will never balance the game around add-ons like the other game does. It's why the community will never require you to use them, because at the end of the day they are not required and are only used by people to make their own experience better.

Harrasment is the problem - YoshiP said it himself, the third party tools are not the issue, it's using them to harass people. Thankfully, they are quick to ban those that do. So I don't understand the people who argue against their use. They don't affect other people and the moment that they do affect other people, they get a ban.

The vast majority of casual players are fine, but there is a small vocal minority of players who want to try and spoil it for others, because they are just pathetic. Players who think Defiance is a 10 second emnity cooldown, or pull with uncomboed mythril tempest, then go on to complain about elite players using cosmetic addons. Just need to look in the mirror and stop blaming others for their inadequacies.

[LittleImp]

ACT does not have the function to make you aware of mechanics before there is any visual. It's just an advanced calculator.

This isn't entirely true. There are various mechanics in the game where a packet is dispatched to the client ahead of the actual visual telegraph, allowing ACT/Cactbot to call the mechanic before any player can naturally see it. A good example of this was Optical Sight in A11s; The game packet that specified which pattern Cruise Chaser was using was dispatched at the start of the castbar, while the actual visual telegraph came out at the end of the castbar. This gave players an additional 2-3 seconds to position for the mechanic, which is definitely an unfair advantage.

[Packetdancer]

ACT does not have the function to make you aware of mechanics before there is any visual. It's just an advanced calculator. There was a mod out there that could do what you said, but within days, a ton of people got banned for using it, and they changed stuff in the game that completely broke it so it wouldn't work.

This isn't actually accurate; a lot of times, an MMO will have to send data to the client ahead-of-time so that the client knows which animations to start and such, and if something is parsing network activity and people learn what that particular data represents in that particular fight, they could certainly add early callouts. (That said, I've been in groups where a raid-caller can recognize a mechanic a full second or two before the caller in another group can based on just the beginning of an animation, or a difference in sound effects, so there's going to be variance in that stuff even without third-party tools in use.)

The thing you mention about an addon that they shut down/broke was actually with regards to waymarks. Specifically, the game did not previously have a way to save some marker presets (which can be very important in raids), and there was a third-party tool that would let you save markers, and then place them automatically. A lot of statics used that, simply so they had a way to have standardized markers.

And that wasn't really an unbalancing factor, nor (demonstrably) one Square-Enix cared about at the time. Sure, you saved time at the start of raid because you could click one button to put down your waymarks, instead of having to sit there for five minutes while someone carefully set them up by hand. It wasn't like it was going to wildly unbalance the raiding scene.

But then I gather some folks used the same method of setting waymarks to make triggers that would swap the markers around mid-fight, based on reading-ahead-of-time network stuff, like mentioned above. So, I guess there was a program which would change the raid markers per-mechanic without requiring anyone to call-out or think, allowing everyone to execute on stuff by just blindly following those. That, Square-Enix didn't like (rather understandably), and so they blocked it by making it impossible on the server side to change raid markers while in combat.

(And they gave us five in-game marker preset slots while doing so, since the functionality for setting them up outside of combat was useful.)

Admittedly, I feel like five isn't enough presets for folks who run a lot of content regularly, so I know there are people out there who still use the original "let me store as many raid marker presets as I want" tools -- I've raided with some of them. But you can no longer change the markers mid-fight, so it got rid of the move-them-automatically-for-the-mechanic tool that was the thing actually causing problems.

[soccerdude8]

As long as SE doesn’t design the game with them in mind, it doesn’t matter

[Vipes]

You have to remember, without third party tools, we wouldn't have player concerts. Well, I guess we would, but they'd be rare and harder for people to pull off. Not all tools/plugins are this evil bad bogyman yet people seem to think so.

[Juzjuzz]

Threads like this remind ne that the XIV community dislikes the *potential* of aggression so much that they go full horseshoe and enshrine passive-aggression as some sort of moral imperative. They don't call you out for bad damage numbers on JP servers, nor do they often try to turn a bad pull into a teaching moment. They add you to the passive-aggressive 2ch blacklist and silently kick you going forward.

FF14 has a really pleasant community...on the surface. The "you don't pay my sub!" crowd is evidence that it's not exactly better. They're just cattier about conflict. The mere fact that the community actively hides from basic information like damage output and pretends that even knowing it is "cheating" speaks for itself.

Very often being sympathetic is all that it takes, players who do that are very rare.

[Dogempire]

They've been in use since coil.

Nothing has changed.


The only ones people got real up in arms were the radars for hunts. That really pissed people off, and rightfully so.

If I recall correctly there was also a tool at the start of Shadowbringers that automatically placed markers for safe spots from certain mechanics that people were using to basically trivialize content by having a tool read the game for you and tell you what to do, and they ended up patching that out by not letting you update markers after the start of a fight

[Lufir]

A lot of people seem to forget that this is a cross-platform game. Addons that give players an advantage over others will never be fully supported and nor should they as long as this game has a split playerbase.

[Semirhage]

They've made it pretty clear that the TOS is broadly written because it makes it easier to enforce correctly.

That and the TOS is more of a CYA than a hard and fast rule. Square Enix makes it very clear that playing third party music is not allowed. However...do you see them ever enforcing it? The reason they don't is because they don't really care that you're doing it. They care about being sued if the copyright holder catches you doing it. Since Universal Music Group likely doesn't have copyright agents slinking around Limsa looking for players to sue, this doesn't really happen. The *real* point behind that part of the TOS is that, in the case of any conflict arising due to copyright claims (i.e. if you upload your performance on youtube and Sony gets pissy) they aren't liable for anything.

Take this attitude and extend it to plugins, and that's why Square isn't really all that concerned with plugins that don't give gameplay advantages. They don't produce them, they don't control them, they aren't at fault or responsible if something happens with them. Outside that, they have no impetus to care. Squawking on the forums about "cheeeeeeeating" be damned.