Increasing number of players using 3rd party tools

[Lanadra]

its a simple trigger in ACT itself, not Cactbot.

and i disagree its not difficult because EU is full of people with really poor English and the game supports only French and German (i don't blame SE for this too much, its really not feasible to get in a full translation for every language, but they could at least do Spanish imo)

to native english speakers, scanning a sentence for two words and reacting in 5s isn't hard, but it might not be so for people where English is their 3rd or 4th language.

i don't really care because my group unanimously decided to do TEA instead of UCOB after our UWU clear. But considering only 2 of my group (including myself) are native english speakers, i wouldn't fault anyone of them for using triggers for nael quotes if we ever go for UCOB. its a bad mechanic. it should've been a visual tell, not something that requires you to read.

I want Dutch as well, and Italian, and Swedish.. and Finnish.. oh, Danish please, Icelandic as well.. and Austrian. Add Greek and Turkish as well.. and Polish. And indeed Spanish as well. Let's be fair now, right?

[StriderShinryu]

It does feel a little bit of a slippery slope to me. Granted, no, I'm not a raider, but it does feel odd when groups coming to the game basically have people custom creating mods for them on day 1 while native players of the game have been doing perfectly fine with nothing more than a damage parser for years. Are the newcomers less skilled? I doubt it. Are the fights in FF14 harder? Presumably not. But it really does speak to the experience itself just being different and that the newcomers are essentially forcing their way onto 14. While it's fine for them individually, you just know it's going to lead to everyone and their dog doing it, necessary or not. And I guess I find it funny that some of the most hardcore people in wanting the game to not only stay difficult but get more difficult, those who are adamant in wanting others to just git gud, are just shrugging their shoulders at what is in some way training wheels.

[ForteNightshade]

I kind of understand using plugins for communication heavy phases like gaols or tenstrike, particularly if you have mutes or people with accessibility issues.

Nael quotes on the other hand are imo a huge part of the intended design of those phases, and they aren't even that difficult to read since you're essentially just doing pattern recognition for single words. Using cactbot to call nael quotes is 100% a crutch.

The general consensus with Nael queues is they aren't well implemented. Having to glance at your chat box and decipher a phase within less than five seconds just isn't fun nor challenging. Most have said it the queues were a large chat bubble above Nael herself or at the top of your screen, they wouldn't be as bothered by the mechanic. RP queues is one of the few mechanics practically everyone said "Nope" and installed triggers. Even those who didn't like them otherwise. Keep in mind, the original phases were far more cryptic but were changed at the start of Shadowbringers largely because of how much disdain the community had towards the mechanic.

As for Gaols. Layla Bell summed it up better. "If you don't want people to use triggers. Design your mechanic better." Gaols give little time to react both in figuring out who has it, getting to your spot and then dealing with the server tick itself. The Bard in my first UWU group actually got knocked back in the gaol itself because she somehow lagged at the right moment. All in all, while Gaols isn't as annoying as Nael queues, it's too finnicky and doesn't give enough react time for a lot of people.

All in all though, you don't hear much complaints from the raid scene about add ons or plug-ins because most simply don't care enough about what other players do. I certainly don't. Frankly, if someone wants to use Cactbot in PF and it helps them clear, that only benefits me since my only concern is clearing the fight. If you literally can't do a fight without Cactbot, it says more about you than anyone else. But I don't really care one way or another. I wouldn't use it myself for no other reason than I dislike the constant ping and reminder for every mechanic.

[OdinelStarrei]

Perhaps they don't give you the info because you aren't meant to have it in the first place?

I also notice the very thing I've brought up in the past. People complain that they want harder content in the game, then make it as easy as possible for themselves when they get it because they don't actually want a challenge. They just want to try to say they are better than everyone else.

If they were actually as good as they claim, they could beat any fight in the game, including Ultimates, on their very first completely blind attempt with no deaths or third party tools.

Logistical information obfuscation is a stupid thing to do in a game that operates by numeric values. In a previous live letter, there was an really awful explanation on why things like damage type were not indicated in the game outside of trial and error. But when a significant majority of the jobs in the game have actions that only work on a specific damage type, it doesn't matter what the excuse is, that information should be clearly telegraphed by the developers(it isn't sometimes), and not assumed or data scraped by the playerbase. Same thing goes for things like UI tweaks, finding out what the actual STATS in this game do, or changing the sound settings within cutscenes via chat commands. The game simply does not have the amount of quality of life features or customizable user actions that some people would prefer.

Strawmanning people who use plugins is not the best way to go about this, because plugins, addons, pretty much everything 3rd party on XIV exists as a way to compensate for personal lack of ability OR maybe, things the developers do not have the time, or the intent to actually implement. Who are these people who are saying they're such god gamers, they knew that UWU was a trick fight designed to waste days worth of prog? You do know the Awoken buff was datamined pre-launch right? And even then, no one figured it out for days. Same thing with Enigma Codex. No one actually says this, and if you know someone who is actually using the legitimate completion of raid content as a cudgel to demean others without factual reasons to do so, such as the lack of merit/logic of their statements, why don't you just tell them to kick sand and stop being an unreasonable individual, instead of painting broadly with a "wow those people? they're actually trash!" brush? Just because you killed raids, doesn't make you 100% right or a better than another. I would think most well-adjusted people know this. There is no need to hyperbole. I complain about wanting harder content because things like Matoya's Relict are almost insulting as an Expert Dungeon, not because I need bot callouts for a protean spread for the 99th time in E11S. Actually watch some of these people do content, if you took the plugins away, I'd hazard a guess they would not immediately devolve into a gibbering mess unable to even do a standard rotation.

The issue is that SE doesn't establish actual boundaries, outside of "don't be mean", and even if they did, the playerbase is under no obligation to respect those boundaries. "But it's against ToS!!!!" Yeah, and? So is RMT, look at PF and Feast. If SE doesn't enforce it, doesn't punish and make an example of those people like they do for harassment/cheating, it doesn't matter. Remember the waymarker changes? Why wasn't everyone in that team who lead to that change immediately suspended? Because there's no real benefit to SE for doing so, no one got hurt, the content was still completed legitimately, and the PR mess would've been awful. It was just streamlining something in the game. Compare this to something to like Ungarmax, which was ACTUAL cheating despite only using in-game accessible commands. Issue is that it objectively delegitimized current content via exploits, and people were punished accordingly.

Modded content, animation and gear replacements, log uploading, packet interception, general game fixes are under the same 3rd party tool umbrella as Discord servers/overlays for content, programs that do Perform perfectly or inject a actual musical instrument into game inputs, or even just recording your own gameplay for uploading on a 3rd party site. Yoshida has said this. In fact, Duty Recorder is a perfect example on how SE continues to drop the ball on adding in features people would find incredibly useful, because their implementation is always half-baked and inferior compared to tools people already use. SSS and the aggro meter does not have enough useful information on a fight-per-fight basis on what needs to change to fix issues in a timely, respectful to those participating manner. Again, if we're not supposed to have access to damage numbers, simply don't put the damage information in the battle log, only actions. But then why do we have damage amounts to the exact number in PvP??? Why do enrages exist? Why is there a double standard, and with that, why isn't it being enforced unilaterally?

This is why the gray area exists. Because harassment and cheating are the actual issues, not the 3rd party tools themselves. If you want to hardline the 3rd party tool situation, you have to go scorched earth, and you have to do it early. The time for that was in Midas, or even debatably Final Coil. Otherwise people will just see it as developers taking away things from the community, even if the community should not have had those things in the first place. It's too ingrained now. There's nothing they can do without blowback. SE gets the best of both worlds by pretending not to notice, letting the community fix issues for them at their own "risk", and by slamming those players who use 3rd party tools when they start harassing the playerbase or going way, way too far. And if players are using triggers as a crutch to compensate of their lack of effort (not disability or some sort of mental block), I think they're doing themselves a disservice and hamstringing their own player development, but that's their choice, and I'm not here to hold their hand, lecture, and force them to play my way, even if we're in the same team together. I honestly don't care.

Side note, Nael quotes in UCOB are a bad mechanic, even after adjustments. In Nael herself they are barely tolerable, but in double trouble, particularly as the tank who is holding Twintania at the time, it is almost impossible to see that tiny chatbox between pure chaos going on around you, the flapping wings of Twin, your own battle effects, the sky being on literal fire. Perhaps if it was the larger, center of the screen textbox I wouldn't feel such ire torwards it. I still did it, but it wasn't a satisfying or interesting way to complete the mechanic, I feel like I was unfairly punished in contrast to my team, while something like A10S, which has MARKERS for what is essentially the same mechanic is immediately more understandable, it's big, it's color-coded, while still requiring the player to have eyeballs. I would've preferred 4 sets of faster Nael quotes with Markers than even 2 with textboxes. If you don't want people to feel like they are forced to use triggers, don't design bad mechanics. People are going to install triggers anyway if they're unwilling to learn, at least make the experience tolerable for those players who don't or can't use triggers. If triggers make your mechanic entirely irrelevant, that's on the developers. If you don't want people to do log review after every single pull, don't design mechanics like Light Rampant that have almost ZERO information feedback to the player. If you don't want people to use auto-markers, don't design mechanics like Titan goals, that circumvent traditional priority system solutions because of time to execute, and not because of mechanic complexity. (see:Tenstrike)

[LittleImp]

The general consensus with Nael queues is they aren't well implemented. Having to glance at your chat box and decipher a phase within less than five seconds just isn't fun nor challenging. Most have said it the queues were a large chat bubble above Nael herself or at the top of your screen, they wouldn't be as bothered by the mechanic. RP queues is one of the few mechanics practically everyone said "Nope" and installed triggers. Even those who didn't like them otherwise. Keep in mind, the original phases were far more cryptic but were changed at the start of Shadowbringers largely because of how much disdain the community had towards the mechanic.

Nael quotes DO appear above her head in a large text-bubble, and have done so since the day the content launched. The only point in the fight where you might have difficulty reading the quote is during adds, particularly if you are far from the boss. Fortunately you can just glance at your chat box for all of 2 seconds or rely on your tanks to call the mechanic.

Ultimate content is geared towards the literal best players in the world, and I don't think it's asking a lot to expect them to be able to read 3 words. It's not that different from learning to read any other boss tell, barring cases of genuine dyslexia.

[Wavaryen]

Ok I'm going to be real here, and it is going to be the honest truth that some of you need to accept.


Rules only are rules if they are enforced.


So no matter what the developers say how they feel about it. Unless they can enforce or even have a way to find out what we are using. It might as well not be a rule. And I think they understand that. They say "It is against the rules to use addons or whatever." and the community said. Ok what can you do to stop us? Nothing? Well not only do we not care what you think. We will STREAM AND SHOW WE ARE USING. and you are not going to do a thing.

So being upset about people using these things is pointless.

[ForteNightshade]

Nael quotes DO appear above her head in a large text-bubble, and have done so since the day the content launched. The only point in the fight where you might have difficulty reading the quote is during adds, particularly if you are far from the boss. Fortunately you can just glance at your chat box for all of 2 seconds or rely on your tanks to call the mechanic.

Ultimate content is geared towards the literal best players in the world, and I don't think it's asking a lot to expect them to be able to read 3 words. It's not that different from learning to read any other boss tell, barring cases of genuine dyslexia.

Here is a video guide of the quotes in question. In what world is this a big, large text-bubble? Not only that but it lasts for less than three seconds (the video is slowed down) before you're meant to react. Just because a fight is geared towards the higher end player doesn't mean mechanics like this are fun to execute. There is nothing mechanically interesting about deciphering a text quote mid-comment. For the same reason I try not reading FC or linkshell messages during chat, I don't enjoy an RP mechanic. It's needlessly distracting from the actual reason I enjoy this type of content: gameplay. This takes away from that aspect of the fight so I read a quote. Have I done it? Yes, several times. And I don't blame anyone for immediately installing triggers. It's just a poorly designed idea.

If you're relying on your tanks or any one person for a callout. What's really the difference over a TTS? If the whole argument is "do the mechanic yourself" Well, you aren't. You're dead if someone else isn't telling you what to do.

Regardless, it isn't about how much its asking from players but rather if the mechanic is fun to engage with. It isn't for the reasons stated above.

[DBriggs304]

Only thing I have ever seen someone use is glamour mods (which some are absolutely amazing).

There is no need for anything else, especially damage meters.

[Wavaryen]

Only thing I have ever seen someone use is glamour mods (which some are absolutely amazing).

There is no need for anything else, especially damage meters.

My friend loves the combo addon that turns your skills into the pvp system. It has been a god send for him and made the game way more enjoyable. He says it feels like a fighting game now that he can hit AAA BBB for his rotation.

[LittleImp]

If you're relying on your tanks or any one person for a callout. What's really the difference over a TTS? If the whole argument is "do the mechanic yourself" Well, you aren't. You're dead if someone else isn't telling you what to do.

This game is a team-based game, and someone, somewhere is having to perform some kind of execution to make that callout. When you use TTS, there is no longer a single person in your group actively involved with the mechanic as it was intended.

I never had any problems learning to read nael quotes so it's just hard for me to empathize with people who struggled with that mechanic. I don't see reading some text as being any different from say, reading a castbar or looking at whether or not a boss is lifting their left or right arm. It's just another way of communicating a mechanic at the end of the day, and reading it is inherently part of the execution of that fight. The quotes even come out during completely inactive parts of the fight, giving you plenty of time to read them. Using a plugin to mentally parse it for you is using a robot to simplify the fight execution, hence it being a crutch. I will continue to standby stating that it's a crutch, and that it detracts from the execution of the fight. Not every mechanic will be fun to every person. I have griped about many, many mechanics over the years, but I would never entertain using a third party tool to circumvent them just because I don't personally don't find them fun.

Using third party tools for diagnostic purposes between pulls is fine, but I genuinely believe that it's gone too far when the tool assists you with fight execution, regardless of if you find a mechanic 'fun' or not.