Increasing number of players using 3rd party tools

[Nanne]

I wonder how they create an unfair advantage of what? Nobody is in a direct competition with you except yourself. Nobody of you is even remotely close to be in the 0,0001% of players that go for World first. None of these grant any real cheats like gold or free items, nobody cares how many mounts you have or achievements or how far you are in raiding, the only people that would even remotely care are people that use mods to log their dps and toxic people.

There were plenty of cheats in ranked Feast matches for the last 3-4 seasons. People running at ridiculous speeds, people that cannot be stunned, people floating mid air, people teleporting out of the starting ring before match warmup ends hitting the other team from the outside without any danger, people having programs automatically interrupt enemy Limit Breaks at 0,0001% of their cast bar every time etc. These didn't use to happen but I noticed a clear trend of more and more people with these kind of things last few seasons

[drtasteyummy]

There were plenty of cheats in ranked Feast matches for the last 3-4 seasons. People running at ridiculous speeds, people that cannot be stunned, people floating mid air, people teleporting out of the starting ring before match warmup ends hitting the other team from the outside without any danger, people having programs automatically interrupt enemy Limit Breaks at 0,0001% of their cast bar every time etc. These didn't use to happen but I noticed a clear trend of more and more people with these kind of things last few seasons

That might be but this isn't something that wouldn't be there even if mods weren't allowed (as in actively being hunted, see WoW), in fact this could easily be adjusted by a single GM just watching but truth is PvP in FF is so minor and unimportant - particularly because it's the satan spawn of toxicity like nothing else not even loggers - that they just don't care. If you were to remove ladder right now I bet most people wouldn't even notice, I argue at best people would notice the complete remove of PvP because of roulette rewards and missing glamour.

[ForteNightshade]

There were plenty of cheats in ranked Feast matches for the last 3-4 seasons. People running at ridiculous speeds, people that cannot be stunned, people floating mid air, people teleporting out of the starting ring before match warmup ends hitting the other team from the outside without any danger, people having programs automatically interrupt enemy Limit Breaks at 0,0001% of their cast bar every time etc. These didn't use to happen but I noticed a clear trend of more and more people with these kind of things last few seasons

You know what prompts that trend? A lack of enforcement in general. It's widely known SE does absolutely nothing about bots and speed hacking unless it's blatantly obvious. Hence why market board bots have infested the crafting scene throughout Shadowbringers. They know nothing will happen. Which it doesn't considering I can list a good number of bots on Cactuar that have been around since Stomrblood.

That is far more impactful on the general playerbase than someone using a plugin for chat bubbles or texture mods.