Mods and cheat engine

[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.