Mods and cheat engine

[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.)