Mods and cheat engine

[MintnHoney]

You mean the links they provided?

The word "include" should have been enough to imply that the other links were acknowledged, at least with a basic command of reading comprehension and perhaps some critical thinking instincts.
I guess you're just willfully incapable?

But just because you or the other person couldn't find it, I'm "squawking".

Presenting a "fact" that cannot be verified is, as far as I'm concerned, "squawking" for the sake of it.

[Kolaina]

The word "include" should have been enough to imply that the other links were acknowledged, at least with a basic command of reading comprehension and perhaps some critical thinking instincts.
I guess you're just willfully incapable?


Presenting a "fact" that cannot be verified is, as far as I'm concerned, "squawking" for the sake of it.

Willfully instigating then. Got it

[MintnHoney]

Willfully instigating then. Got it

I guess this is the part where I say "good."
So


I'm sorry you feel so much for "your friend" that my pointing out that their "evidence" is not "evidence" hurts you, but you're going to have to just learn to deal with it, just like you're going to have to learn to deal with the fact that mods and cheats aren't the same thing, that mods are in a don't-ask-don't-tell situation as far as usage is concerned, and that no one is against actual cheating being reported and an offense (so you're arguing for the sake of it at this point).

[Koldan]

One thing are mods that change looks of a dress on your side, only visible to you. And completely different story are mods that give you competitive and other advantages over players that dont use them or cant use them even if they want to (consoles).

[JanVanding]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgAzp_yp16U
Keeps running full speed despite being heavied and bound.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/452580-Hackers-still-rampant-despite-multiple-reports-Please-give-visibility-on-this.
A Forum thread where people discuss their experience with cheaters in PVP.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/aae705d4b111c011d917da13916bd640829c1ae9
The Dev team banned free trial accounts from participating in PVP due to cheaters on free trial accounts.

And one google search of PVP mods and I found a website (which I will not link for obvious reasons). Doesn't exist, though, right?

See those actual hacks involve packet injection into the server map host and the GMs will pick up on the code anomaly as soon as they check.

Why those are easy reports and easy bans

[Nanne]

One thing are mods that change looks of a dress on your side, only visible to you. And completely different story are mods that give you competitive and other advantages over players that dont use them or cant use them even if they want to (consoles).

I am very sure that modifying files to change the looks of something and using 3rd party programs/cheats are equally prohibited by the terms of service. Everyone using them should know the risks they are taking by using them and I don't think "It only affects me" has any weight in if you broke the ToS or not

[Melorie]

One thing are mods that change looks of a dress on your side, only visible to you. And completely different story are mods that give you competitive and other advantages over players that dont use them or cant use them even if they want to (consoles).

Welcome to PC gaming. I have people that can run the game in ultra resolutions or with graphics I'm not able to achieve because of my current hardware. However, I'm still failing to see the competitive aspect. There's no competition in this game, zero. The only competition regarding PvE content might be if you're talking about world-first, which there are zero plugins and add-ons to help you with by the time you're competing.

But discussing that is useless, your feeling regarding competition aren't mine, so whatever. To each their own.

[Packetdancer]

You bet that, if I download cactpot, I still won't be able to land into a random ultimate party and clear it.

So, I know this was a typo, but I realized that I'm noticing a lot of things getting conflated in this thread, so it might be worth adding a little clarity.

"Cactpot" is the minigame at the Gold Saucer, both the Jumbo Cactpot (which is basically a lottery once a week) and Mini Cactpot (which is a daily scratch ticket with much smaller prizes). There is a mod that will give you suggestions on which square to scratch on a Mini Cactpot ticket. It doesn't guarantee good results—it's often wrong!—but it gives you the most likely line to have the biggest payout. The math behind that can be done with a pencil and paper or on any number of websites, though, so the mod doesn't give anything other than "convenience" by putting the solver into the game itself rather than on a webpage (or your notebook). This mod was discussed early on in the thread.

"Cactbot" is an addon for ACT (the external tool many raiders use to parse and analyze fights to improve their performance); it's named as a punny reference to the above-mentioned cactpot. Though folks keep referring to specifically the raid callouts it can do, Cactbot itself is basically a scripting engine which allows you to trigger off of and react to data as ACT processes it. So "Cactbot" is actually a collection of a variety of different modules with different purposes built on the same engine, though folks here are basically referring to one specific module.

Now, I don't use the "Raidboss" module in Cactbot that handles callouts (and which is being conflated with Cactbot as a whole); I honestly have no ethical problem with it, but I am the raid-caller in most of my groups and suspect I would find something giving me automated callouts distracting and actively detrimental rather than beneficial. (I mean, I certainly find it distracting when a second actual person decides to chime in with callouts of their own on the voice chat, so I figure I don't need to add a robot to that as well.)

That said, there are a number of other modules built on Cactbot, and the one that I do think is invaluable is "Oopsy Raidsy". When a wipe happens, Oopsy Raidsy will give you a breakdown of deaths and debuffs, showing (for instance) that the NIN died because they took 38k worth of damage when they only had 32k of health (meaning "if they'd been healed more they probably could've survived that"), or that the BRD took 98k worth of damage (meaning "something went wrong here, and healing wouldn't have been any help"). If you click on a death it'll show a log of damage and healing leading up to that death. It'll also show any instances of avoidable damage (i.e. any time someone took a vuln stack or damage down, meaning there was a way to avoid being hit by something there). When a pull goes bad and someone's like "I don't know why I died there" or "okay, did we just need more healing?" or whatever, Oopsy Raidsy can be amazingly valuable at helping a static break down just where everything took a hard left into disaster after a pull turns into a wipe.

There's also the Eureka module, which provides the functionality of the Eureka or Bozja tracker websites (i.e. tracking how long until it's possible to spawn a given Notorious Monster, Skirmish, or Critical Engagement) just in a map window right in game. Stuff like that.

"xivalexander" is a tool which subtracts a best estimate of network round-trip time from the game's inbuilt animation lock, allowing people with terrible ping to double-weave with the same degree of consistency that folks with non-terrible connections to the game can have. It could also hypothetically be used in a cheat-y manner to enable triple-weaving, though one imagines that would trip some alarms on the servers and send up a warning flag that might get someone banned; enabling double-weaving wouldn't, because it would functionally just look the same on the server side as someone who has less-terrible ping. (Because as it is, some jobs -- notably NIN -- are just straight unplayable with bad ping unless you negate the animation lock that gets added on top of that.)

There are other tools, some of which are definitely cheaty. Anything that violates the normal rules of how PvP operates, for instance. Or there used to be a tool that would shift the waymarkers around mid-fight, meaning you didn't even need a raid-caller because it'd be like "Okay, you are marker A, just follow that" and then you went wherever the tool put that marker. That one, Square-Enix quite obviously thought was cheaty, because they addressed it by making it impossible to move or place waymarks once combat begins.

And that's why I think it's hard to speak of "mods" as a single whole. There's stuff like the Mini Cactpot solver or the Eureka module built on Cactbot (which are just convenience, providing information you can get from an external website anyway, or even do by hand for the Cactpot solver). There's stuff like Cactbot's Oopsy Raidsy, which gives no actual performance aid but can be really useful for figuring out where stuff went wrong in prog. There's stuff like Cactbot's Raidboss, which I think is little different than a human raid-caller; yes, it can call some mechanics before a human raid-caller would, but it can call other ones poorly (if at all), so it's still no substitute for learning the mechanics—any more than a raid caller is. There's stuff like xivalexander, which can be cheaty but can also be used to level the playing field. There's stuff out there that's purely aesthetic, like mods to change the UI style or do artistic screenshots or whatnot. And there's stuff out there that's just straight-up cheaty and should absolutely be shut down.

[Melorie]

So, I know this was a typo, but I realized that I'm noticing a lot of things getting conflated in this thread, so it might be worth adding a little clarity.

Ooops! hah Thanks for the correction. And yes, people might branch this discussion as simply "waaah it's against the ToS ban it all" but it is way more nuanced than that. Look at the community built around g-shade, and creating their original characters exactly like they would want... There's a lot of room for creativity with these things, so acting like they're all bad isn't doing anyone favours. Seems over the top imo.

[Packetdancer]

Everything you mentioned is accessible inside the game, everyone can do it.
What we are talking about here are mods/hacks and such that allow you to do something base game doesnt give you, whats so hard to understand?

Nothing is. In fact, you have grasped the fundamental point I am trying to make (see bolded line).

If the argument is "Cactbot lets other people clear content more easily than I did when I did it, and if other people can clear it more easily my achievement is lessened as a result" — which is, in fact, an argument being made in this thread — then it's absolutely relevant. Because my actual, literal point is that "other people can clear a thing I cleared more easily than I did when I cleared it" is going to be true even without mods simply due to power creep over the course of a game's lifespan. Placing value on your achievements in-game only so long as they remain difficult is not going to be a path to happiness, even if Square-Enix found a way to magically erase all mods and third-party tools tomorrow with the digital equivalent of a Thanos-snap. Because, as I said—and you agreed—achievements are going to become easier over time naturally even just with stuff in the game.

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.

But when the argument is "Cactbot's Raidboss callouts make it easier for someone to clear savage content, therefore my clear of savage content is cheapened"... no. There's an infinite number of savage clear titles and rewards out there. The fact that someone else got their Eden mount from E12S using Cactbot for callouts does not lessen my enjoyment of having gotten it at level 80, any more than it does that people are getting the mount now running E12S unsynced at level 90. And that argument is being made in this thread—"are you still proud of your achievement now that other people can get it more easily"—and I will absolutely, categorically state that if you only remain happy with your PvE achievements so long as other people cannot get them, that is a recipe to drive yourself to madness and misery. Regardless of the existence or nonexistence of mods.