Reset time with xpansion. Lets deal with the cheating finally.

[Ashua]

Ok. It has been almost 10 years since I have been on the game. I understand that a company cannot catch all the cheating going on. That is to be expected. What I cannot understand is why reports from people to those who are cheaters but not of the RMT type are still untouched. The high-end game on here is a joke when cheating is rampant enough from public acquired bots that lets you learn the routine of the raid while performing perfect rotations. The game plays for itself if you use a computer. Automated play for trade skills. AFK leveling and farming pieces for anima weapons and house-sitting bots. You don't really invest in security for checking your clients for injection-based bots by the looks of it. You let reports from the community go unheard of for famous cheaters who literally farmed billions of Gil automated and ran a high-end raiding team that also sold Gil to the Gil farming companies and went around scooping up dozens of houses for RMT. Why don't we start over?

Help us help you. Take reports of cheating seriously. Put it as a freaking option that does not require jumping through hoops and 10 minutes to fill out the freaking report. Allow a right-click report of cheating option. You guys take fake reporting seriously. We know if it's abused it will turn back to bite us. There is absolutely no defense for allowing cheating to go on. I play this game just for social interaction and take my competitive gaming to other venues that care about people who follow the rules. SE takes the cue and helps us help you. Invest in software that can detect injection-based bots. Go after the public bots with lawsuits and shut those game-destroying people to the cleaners. Do you want to expand your player base? This is your chance. Anyone who enjoys competitive gaming of the high end does not take FF 14 seriously as long as it's ridiculously easy to cheat. I wager more people cheat than not at this point in time. Help us help you to change this around after so many years, please.

[Setesh45]

Ok. It has been almost 10 years since I have been on the game. I understand that a company cannot catch all the cheating going on. That is to be expected. What I cannot understand is why reports from people to those who are cheaters but not of the RMT type are still untouched. The high-end game on here is a joke when cheating is rampant enough from public acquired bots that lets you learn the routine of the raid while performing perfect rotations. The game plays for itself if you use a computer. Automated play for trade skills. AFK leveling and farming pieces for anima weapons and house-sitting bots. You don't really invest in security for checking your clients for injection-based bots by the looks of it. You let reports from the community go unheard of for famous cheaters who literally farmed billions of Gil automated and ran a high-end raiding team that also sold Gil to the Gil farming companies and went around scooping up dozens of houses for RMT. Why don't we start over?

Help us help you. Take reports of cheating seriously. Put it as a freaking option that does not require jumping through hoops and 10 minutes to fill out the freaking report. Allow a right-click report of cheating option. You guys take fake reporting seriously. We know if it's abused it will turn back to bite us. There is absolutely no defense for allowing cheating to go on. I play this game just for social interaction and take my competitive gaming to other venues that care about people who follow the rules. SE takes the cue and helps us help you. Invest in software that can detect injection-based bots. Go after the public bots with lawsuits and shut those game-destroying people to the cleaners. Do you want to expand your player base? This is your chance. Anyone who enjoys competitive gaming of the high end does not take FF 14 seriously as long as it's ridiculously easy to cheat. I wager more people cheat than not at this point in time. Help us help you to change this around after so many years, please.

Honestly, I'm all for adding some kind of protection and client integrity checking tools into the game. Of course a ton of people will abuse a game that has no protection whatsoever.
However, at this point the modding community is so big that if they actually added these things and made modding the client impossible they would lose a significant portion of players. At least that's what I believe.
Yoshi-P also views this "spying" software as something bad, that's what I read in an interview years ago.

[Ashua]

ff 14 has a modding community? Lol? Am I that out of touch? I was just tanking a dungeon just now that had 3 people vanish right in front of me to the final boss. I had to run there and they had already engaged the boss by the time I ran to the entrance. Just watching teleport cheaters just now really frustrates me.

[Setesh45]

ff 14 has a modding community? Lol? Am I that out of touch?

Yep, 80% of the mods are ERP mods tho. Just google ffxiv mods and open the site with archive in its name. You can find anything from 4K texture overhauls to complete body replacements, animation replacements, spell replacements. Using those mods is of course against the ToS.

[Ashua]

Maybe we are beyond that point of no return.... I still want them to give us a way to more effectively deal with the non-rmt cheaters though. An easier-to-use report function and a faster follow-through need to be the minimum.

[Krotoan]

Anyone who enjoys competitive gaming of the high end does not take FF 14 seriously as long as it's ridiculously easy to cheat. I wager more people cheat than not at this point in time. Help us help you to change this around after so many years, please.

... people play this game competitively in PVE?

Y'all need to chill.

[Ashua]

... people play this game competitively in PVE?

Y'all need to chill.

You seem to have a bit of discomfort. Anything about my actual post you disagree with?

[Risvertasashi]

Well if people are teleporting, SE can definitely detect that and they'll get the banhammer in time.

The last time people cheated in a raid setting, waaaaay back in second coil, they got the banhammer too. Unless you mean like camera/zoom out mods, well, that's a bit less detectable but I'm also not particular concerned by what little advantage that gives people. Or the automatic waymarks, but that was patched out. And then... I guess there's still automatic overhead markers. But, again, that's pretty banal as far as advantage goes. It's not like people can cheat to add 1000 or 10000 to their DPS, that'd be a much bigger deal since it'd break down the fundamentals of the game.

While I wouldn't call SE's mostly-laissez-faire approach ideal, I also think people get way too bent out of shape over minor things like auto callouts or even just that the DPS meter exists.

My ideal would be if SE provided an official modding API, as that would provide a clearer line on "this is acceptable" and "this is not acceptable", but they dropped all plans for mod support long ago and per their recent liveletter, well, they acknowledge that basically "what constitutes unacceptable third party app use" is a conversation that would never end so use anything at your own risk.

So we're stuck with this awkward "don't ask don't tell" situation where you can parse, graphically mod the game, have auto callouts, etc as long as you don't tell anyone, but if you do anything that sends data to the server - even if it seems as innocuous as markers - you're taking a much bigger risk.

It's not ideal, but time and again it comes up and this is what we're left with.

[Teno]

... people play this game competitively in PVE?

Y'all need to chill.

Well competitive does not necessarily mean a leaderboard, but just tackling on and beating the hardest content along with other people.

[Setesh45]

Well if people are teleporting, SE can definitely detect that and they'll get the banhammer in time.

The last time people cheated in a raid setting, waaaaay back in second coil, they got the banhammer too. Unless you mean like camera/zoom out mods, well, that's a bit less detectable but I'm also not particular concerned by what little advantage that gives people. Or the automatic waymarks, but that was patched out. And then... I guess there's still automatic overhead markers. But, again, that's pretty banal as far as advantage goes. It's not like people can cheat to add 1000 or 10000 to their DPS, that'd be a much bigger deal since it'd break down the fundamentals of the game.

While I wouldn't call SE's mostly-laissez-faire approach ideal, I also think people get way too bent out of shape over minor things like auto callouts or even just that the DPS meter exists.

My ideal would be if SE provided an official modding API, as that would provide a clearer line on "this is acceptable" and "this is not acceptable", but they dropped all plans for mod support long ago and per their recent liveletter, well, they acknowledge that basically "what constitutes unacceptable third party app use" is a conversation that would never end so use anything at your own risk.

So we're stuck with this awkward "don't ask don't tell" situation where you can parse, graphically mod the game, have auto callouts, etc as long as you don't tell anyone, but if you do anything that sends data to the server - even if it seems as innocuous as markers - you're taking a much bigger risk.

It's not ideal, but time and again it comes up and this is what we're left with.

Auto callouts, markings etc. destroyed dungeons and raids in WoW. Instead of playing the game, knowing the mechanics you just do what an addon yells at you. Using such things has devastating effects, and it's a HUGE advantage over other players.
It went so far that some fights now rely on you having the addon, and you cannot tell something is happening without the addon. This is a piss poor design and I support the complete ban of all these things.