Mods and cheat engine

[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.

[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.

[Packetdancer]

I have been summoned to post once more. God be with you all, because I shall have no mercy for the forum post-length limits. (Though, I mean... do I ever?)

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?

I've tried to explain my position several times in this thread. (Arguably at greater length and verbosity than is strictly necessary.)

For one thing, I don't think it's an absolute. Something like ReShade that I use for purposes of better depth-of-field in GPose screenshots, or turning a screenshot into watercolor or an oil painting or a pencil sketch or whatever other insane artistic shader I've written recently (I will someday figure out a good algorithm for sumi-e ink painting)... is that a huge problem?

(Heck, even if it was, I could just stuff my shaders into Nvidia's Freestyle, which officially supports the game; if you haven't rebound the key and have an Nvidia card with GeForce Experience running, hit Alt+F2 in-game and tada, Nvidia's variant of ReShade! You're running it right now! It's just that ReShade/GShade has an interface that's far more convenient for me, as -- among other things -- I can reload my shaders while developing them, without having to quit the dang game and restart.)

But while the specific stuff being discussed here doesn't seem hugely problematic to me, there are definitely mods that are problematic. See, for instance, an excerpt taken from this post:

When the argument is "someone using these tools to obtain this achievement actively impedes my own attempt to get this achievement"—i.e., PvP hackery, botting for the Ishgard restoration, etc.—then yes, I agree entirely it's a huge problem. When there's only a limited number of the achievement to be had—top 100 in a Feast season, Saint or Beata/Beatus titles for the Firmament, etc.—then anyone doing something to give themselves an advantage is absolutely a huge problem.

Or from this post:

I have no doubt such tools do exist, likely by modifying the game process (rather than just being an external program that sits there watching network traffic). And I would say those sort of tools which give you information not accessible otherwise in the game are definitely deeply problematic. But something like that goes way farther than anything I've seen folks doing with Cactbot. And while Cactbot can call out mechanics before a human raid-caller, in most cases that's only by a second or two at most (because the "start the mechanic now" message from the server tends to come pretty much immediately before an animation starts).

For another, I'm not convinced the specific mods being repeatedly discussed in this thread (ACT's Cactbot addon -- specifically Cactbot's "Raidboss" module, various UI tweaks, and -- weirdly -- the mini Cactpot solver that also can be found as a webapp on many sites) actually give anyone a meaningful advantage, as opposed to QoL tweaks.

(XIValexander is a potentially problematic outlier among the specific things being bandied about in this thread, and I've detailed my opinion on it separately; I have mixed feelings on it, because while it can obviously be used for cheating intent, it can also let someone play the game with the same ability to weave or double-weave that I -- as someone with low ping to the servers -- can do unaided. I like leveling the playing field, but I find the ability to use it to make said field uneven and cheat to be concerning and problematic.)

But with the exception of XIValexander, I don't think there's a huge fundamental advantage to something like Cactbot over having a human raid-caller; I've noted this several times. Yes, there are unquestionably mechanics where I've been told it can call them faster than me (or with more personalized results). On the other hand, there's also a lot of stuff that Cactbot apparently gets wrong, which I tend to think balances it out. For instance, from the same post as the previous quote:

Yes, there are mechanics it can call faster than I will ever be able to -- notably, from what I understand, P3's Experimental Fireplume, where it can apparently call whether it's the big center AoE or the spiraling Shiva-circle type hits way before I have any clue from the animation. (Which, to be fair, I find a little annoying. But whatever.) But I tend to think that balances out because there are also mechanics it cannot call consistently or correctly; every time I see someone blindly following Cactbot in P1S through Intemperance there's like an 80% chance they will die, because apparently it calls it wrong in a lot of cases as it doesn't actually know what the pattern of gems in your square is or how your party resolves it. Similarly, it evidently calls things wrong for Shackles of Time during the Shining Cells phase.

If you blindly follow Cactbot, it will eventually kill you because there's stuff it just doesn't read right; it lacks context, it doesn't know what strat your group is using, etc. Just like if you blindly follow my call-outs, someday I will be tired and say "West" when I meant "East" and kill you as a result. ("Weast" and "Snorth" are perfectly cromulent directions, so there.)

But lastly, I think there's a difference that seems small but is surprisingly meaningful between "cheating" and "unfair". Are the mods being discussed here unfair, because PC users have the (hypothetical) option to use them and console players don't? Yes, unequivocably, they're unfair; none of them really give you information that isn't available already by other means, but they can repackage it in a far more convenient manner. But are the specific ones being discussed here cheating? I don't actually think so.

As per yet another of my posts here:

But if the argument is that QoL changes to repackage information you do have in a more-easily-processed form is cheating... I think that's where folks are disagreeing with each other. Because something can be unfair without being cheating; I think we'd all agree it's unfair that someone who lives in San Jose will have an easier time playing NIN -- personal skill aside -- than someone who lives somewhere in Argentina, simply by virtue of ping and how this game's netcode works. (Or, frankly, an easier time than even someone who lives in like... Philadelphia.)

But I don't think any of us would qualify "I live in San Jose" as meaning that person is cheating, even if it's still unfair.

Brief digression, but...

- 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.

I don't actually think Discord itself is against the ToS; I could be functionally just using my cell phone to call a friend and have them do callouts for me, and it would be functionally the same thing. I wish folks would generally stop using Discord voice as an example here, because it feels like a strawman argument. Though if you squint, you could probably make the ToS forbid it.

(Discord's in-game overlay that shows who's currently talking, though, would probably be against a strict reading of the ToS.)

[Risvertasashi]

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?

"Cheating" is subjective.

I mean if you want to go this route, there are people that will consider others to be cheaters even if they make zero modifications to the game, but do something that they perceive as unintended by the devs. For example, perhaps they find a way to solve or cancel a mechanic that a boss does in a way that the developers probably did not foresee (stuff like this happens not that uncommonly). More common terms might be "exploit" or "cheese" but there are those that will call it cheating.

And then some even consider it cheating to use a website that has a simulator or simply has in game information collected but perhaps presented more conveniently.

So, you can essentially draw the line wherever you want; some people consider certain things cheating even using nothing but what's available in game. Others for things that don't even interact with the game but provide a convenient source of information.

And we haven't even gotten to perhaps the most common tool yet: parsers. They don't change game files or anything about the game at all. They just read information, and are a calculator for that information. If you go by "modifies files" then it's not a cheat, but there are those that consider it cheating.

So, you can call someone's mod for better character eye graphics cheating if you want, since it modifies a file. You can call anything cheating really. Plenty of people do.

-

And, finally, even in singleplayer games that have official mod support, there are those that consider using mods to be cheating.

So, ultimately, for more productive conversation I recommend more precise language. Because cheating pretty much always means "thing I don't like" and any more precise meaning changes wildly from person to person.

[EaMett]

I don't actually think Discord itself is against the ToS; I could be functionally just using my cell phone to call a friend and have them do callouts for me, and it would be functionally the same thing. I wish folks would generally stop using Discord voice as an example here, because it feels like a strawman argument. Though if you squint, you could probably make the ToS forbid it.

(Discord's in-game overlay that shows who's currently talking, though, would probably be against a strict reading of the ToS.)

Well setting aside the fact that YoshiP brought Discord up himself as a grey area with third-party rules (kinda confirming that it's "technically" a third-party tool). You do further my point. The overlay brings nothing functional but pushes it into the realms of being ToS breaking.
Besides, your phone could also be considered a third-party tool. The tool doesn't HAVE to hook straight into the game. I dare say that the simulators out there that help you practice mechanics without having to actually get there in a fight are most likely also ToS breaking. But they're standalone software.

[Kolaina]

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.

Why are you always so hostile? Try discussing a topic for a change maybe