Mods and cheat engine

[KageTokage]

The situation with the hunting apps is particularly awful as they piss off most of the people who are actively involved in spawning the hunts as they're no longer able to discreetly relay things to ensure that the people actually putting in effort arrive first if at all.

It got bad enough that the creator of one of the more popular apps implemented a mandatory delay into its relays specifically to make the whole hunting experience more relaxed and fair to the spawners, but then the lazy "hunters" who have no involvement in actually spawning anything got mad and pressured them into removing it under the laughable pretense that we were somehow "gatekeeping" them when they do it themselves more often then not due to the randoms generally being the ones to pull things ASAP because they just want to get it over with, everyone else be damned.

[MaxCarnage]

Speaking strictly from a standpoint of whether mods are cheating or not, and completely disregarding the morality of their use, I would like to see people who do not believe mods to be cheating to explain why, as it is always the people who think they are having to defend themself.

And I would like more reason that "because it doesn't affect anyone else". If you say that, I will completely disregard your opinion. You can cheat in a single player game. And it is still cheating despite it not "affecting anyone else".

I'm not being facetious, I would genuinely like to understand why modifying the game files and giving yourself an advantage over others is not cheating. You can't say mods don't give an advantage because otherwise there would be absolutely zero reason to use them. So, I ask, how are mods not considered cheating?

[EaMett]

Speaking strictly from a standpoint of whether mods are cheating or not, and completely disregarding the morality of their use, I would like to see people who do not believe mods to be cheating to explain why, as it is always the people who think they are having to defend themself.

There's always a grey area.

- Using reshade is a mod but it really only changes hues and some graphical artifacts (aliasing, etc.). Is it a cheat?
- Discord is a third-party tool and in a way I guess could be considered cheating since someone can do callouts (versus a complete no third party rule). But of course, I don't think anyone calls Discord a cheat.
- The tool that is used to cut animation lock was actually intended to give players that live far from the servers the same experience as players in California (for NA). I don't think living in California is much of a "cheat", so aligning animation lock to emulate the same gaming experience as people in California isn't exactly a cheat either. (more like a bad feature that was corrected. I'm actually surprised SE haven't fixed this already). Of course, it can be abused, but again, shades of grey
- The game provides you with logs of your damage, taking time after a fight to go over your logs and add your damage up to figure out your dps isn't cheating. Manually copying the logs to a spreadsheet to do that is essentially the same thing just less manual labor. If you go one step further and have a tool that does the same but just doesn't require you to manually copy the logs over, it's basically a parser. Again, a lot of grey, where do you want to see the line drawn?
- The third-party launcher can allow you to click on links in the chatbox. Or add notes to players on your friend's list so that you can remember where/how you met them. These are more QoL features than actual cheats. Even things like allowing you to have more slots for raid markers, etc.. Aren't exactly cheats.

If you're of the mind that discord isn't a cheat, then what advantage do you gain from trading a human callout for a similarly timed digital one? Can you call it a cheat if you don't gain an advantage?

It's all a lot of grey. But people don't like grey, instead they rather see everything either black or white because it's smoother on the brain. So lines need to be drawn and tbh the only one that matters is SE's and they really only care about harrassement and competitive content (As they should).

Edit: And that does lead us to "but it doesn't affect you" comments. Games are meant to have fun. Some people find it fun to crank up the difficulty and do everything on the hardest level. Some find it fun to speed run. Some people find it fun to have infinite life/amo/money. It's not "wrong" to cheat in single-player games. In fact, cheat codes have been a thing forever now for this specific reason. Multiplayer content isn't so different, but it comes with one caveat we can all agree on: It shouldn't reduce/ruin the fun for other players. Any competitive content, be it housing, marketboard, PVP, majhong, etc.. is definitely a no-go. But other stuff?... well again, it's blurry/grey

And even that caveat is grey in and of itself. Not reducing the fun for other players isn't a rule set in stone. Here's food for thought:
- How does it affect me if a player has fun playing with callouts before mechanics go out, and telegraphs for mechanics that shouldn't have any, and or quadruple weave tools (aka 'PVE cheats')? Well, doesn't really matter in the end. If you don't PVE you won't even cross paths with them. And if you do, you get the consistently better version of them.
- How does it affect me if a player has fun logging in to semi-afk and take pictures of their catgirl? They don't contribute to the PF so I'll wait longer to fill. I might need to carry them through content at some point. And ultimately, they use a spot in the queue when they're only "semi" playing the game.

Obviously the first isn't ok and the second one is. But goes to show.

[Caitlyn]

There's always a grey area.

- Using reshade is a mod but it really only changes hues and some graphical artifacts (aliasing, etc.). Is it a cheat?

Reshade is neither a grey area nor a mod (its a post-processing injector). Its officially allowed to use it (from 2013):

Utilizing such a tool would not violate any agreements customers have with Square Enix, and we don't plan on doing anything to restrict users from accessing it.

However, we advise that players use this at their own risk. Square Enix does not regulate the content of the aforementioned add-on and will not be responsible for any damage or losses resulting from its use.

[Packetdancer]

Reshade is neither a grey area nor a mod (its a post-processing injector). Its officially allowed to use it (from 2013):

HEY! You found that post! (The forum search wasn't turning it up for me when I looked for it, so I couldn't link it when I referred to its existence earlier. I'm gonna save the dang link this time.)

But yes, the quote matches my recollection, that they basically said "Shader Injection is okay with us, go have fun, but if it breaks your game you're kinda on your own to fix it."

[EaMett]

Reshade is neither a grey area nor a mod (its a post-processing injector). Its officially allowed to use it (from 2013):

There have been updates to prohibited activities since 2013 and reshaders now technically fall under that umbrella. Of course, they would never ban anyone for it. Never have and most likely never will.
I brought it up because it is technically part of the ToS now AND you could technically use reshade to get better visibility of AOE telegraphs on certain arenas (p3 for example). So it seemed relevant.

- Modifying, analyzing, integrating, and/or reverse-engineering game software or data.
- Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

snip

I think part of the issue with this topic is that the term 'mods' is super vague, when there are several tiers and types of 3rd party modifications that have varying ranges of effects on the game.

The term 'Mods' in FF14 for a large amount of people, refer exclusively to visual modifications of the in-game assets exclusively, such as gear modifications. These mods have no tangible advantages or benefits in player skill, and are purely aesthetic flair. And in many ways, can provide negatives due to the injected risk of a mod not loading properly and creating a DX11 error for an instant game crash. This is likely the arguing point of several people saying they're not cheating, since they're not creating a positive advantage in their game state compared to another's, skill wise.

The term 'plugins' I think fits the topic better here, as the function of plugins in FF14 is drastically different than the visual mods are and -can- increase the advantage in their game state positively. I think if the terms were better differentiated, you'd find less people arguing mods are not cheating if the topic was instead phrased as 'plugins and cheat engine' instead.

That being said on the plugins, there's plenty of people that will likely argue the plugins they use aren't cheating because (and this is a thought process I agree with) several features of some plugins out there should straight up be features in the game, so they justify it as simply fixing the devs laziness. Like, the various 'double weave regardless of latency' plugins showcase that Square could easily do the exact same thing as these plugins are doing and create an experience 100x better for every non-living next to the servers player in the game - yet mistifyingly, they refuse. There's even twitter threads where one guy went and broke down step by step how FF14 handles animation locks and its completely ludicrous how they're handled.

Things like Cactbot however, due to its ability to predict certain attacks faster than any human can (especially things like experimental fireplume where it's the same cast name but 2-3 different versions where you have to wait for a visual indicator after the fact), along with being able to transcribe all your debuffs during something like Intermediate Relativity that would be incredibly difficult and annoying for any human to manually call out for everyone in the raid group - yeah, that's straight up cheating and has no valid defense.

[Shialan]

Speaking strictly from a standpoint of whether mods are cheating or not, and completely disregarding the morality of their use, I would like to see people who do not believe mods to be cheating to explain why, as it is always the people who think they are having to defend themself.

And I would like more reason that "because it doesn't affect anyone else". If you say that, I will completely disregard your opinion. You can cheat in a single player game. And it is still cheating despite it not "affecting anyone else".

I'm not being facetious, I would genuinely like to understand why modifying the game files and giving yourself an advantage over others is not cheating. You can't say mods don't give an advantage because otherwise there would be absolutely zero reason to use them. So, I ask, how are mods not considered cheating?

Then you should accept answers that a third-party ban means EVERY SINGLE third-party tool. That would include Discord or any kind of website. But you don't want to accept that, so you try to tell us that they don't count because of how they collect the data. Third-party means third-party. Easy as that.

[Aurikai]

Speaking strictly from a standpoint of whether mods are cheating or not, and completely disregarding the morality of their use, I would like to see people who do not believe mods to be cheating to explain why, as it is always the people who think they are having to defend themself.

And I would like more reason that "because it doesn't affect anyone else". If you say that, I will completely disregard your opinion. You can cheat in a single player game. And it is still cheating despite it not "affecting anyone else".

I'm not being facetious, I would genuinely like to understand why modifying the game files and giving yourself an advantage over others is not cheating. You can't say mods don't give an advantage because otherwise there would be absolutely zero reason to use them. So, I ask, how are mods not considered cheating?

It's only cheating when it detrimentally affects other players, gather bots reduce market prices for others, speed hacks give unfair advantage against others, changing your pose doesn't negatively affect anyone. It comes down to how many people are affecting and how hard.

[Melorie]

And I would like more reason that "because it doesn't affect anyone else". If you say that, I will completely disregard your opinion. You can cheat in a single player game. And it is still cheating despite it not "affecting anyone else".
?

Would you rather elaborate how it is impacting you, though? Do you care if a friend of yours use a "cheat" in a single player game they're playing?
I'm genuinely trying to understand giving such importance to what other people are doing even though it doesn't affect you.
Is the advantage you're talking truly an advantage? Because that's very subjective. If I land into a party with someone using any of these plugins... First I wouldn't know, but if I did, I wouldn't believe they're having an advantage over me. Why are you feeling this way?

The whole point here is that it doesn't really matter if this is "cheating" for some people. The fact is, why do you care so much about it, given that this changes nothing in your game? Someone having a program that gives them callouts in a fight doesn't take my enjoyment out of the fight.