Mods and cheat engine

[Grebeny]

That being said, the post you're referring to is them talking about methods of circumventing the afk timer they patched out of the game; not 'trapping' the game code, which has a massive different connotation since it implies an undercover change intent on exposing something, when all they did was announce they were fixing several exploits players could use to get around the afk timer, the literal opposite of a trap which requires ignorance on the target's part to fall into it.

You didn't sourced any of your information. And clearly said there were no addons doing telegraphs during this ultimate, now claiming "but its from another user". The other thing is, I watched him half hour and I noticed instantly he had marker on the cast bar showing him when he is able to move during cast, he had something showing him when to press skill to send it in queue and when he was banned, his friends told him "we told you" because they knew he was cheating and he will get banned and warned him about it before they started the prog. And yes at release the none ban plugin was working, they added the code week or two after release. There are ways for data mining, but I don't want to promote any of this to explain how simple telegraphs may be added at new content, the tools they have now are quite a lot advanced, of course. But even just after the big drama for the streamers, someone posted how to make a perfect run of the ultimate with only 4 addons installed. He intentionally didn't posted the addons, but I will not spread the video too. It was just a show how the battle can be fully automated because of the lack of control of addons.

[Grebeny]

I imagine most people do not write their own music (though some out there are likely talented enough to!).. so if you're adhering to rules- barding musically would likely have to cease to be a feature of the game because who knows if you're being recorded and your performance being uploaded unbeknownst to you?

I think as far as issues within the game worth taking a stand over- this one baffles me the most.

The rule you are talking about is related with copyright songs. The FF system for playing makes it too hard for a song to sound close enough to recieve copy right claim. Otherwise I know at least 10 streams that would be banned even without the involvement of SE.

[HyoMinPark]

Talking very specifically about Stormblood, people were complaining so much about dragoon and samurai because they had no party buffs and nobody wanted them in their parties. So there was an issue with selfish jobs, but on the other end. And I personally don't see issue with haveing ACT and FFlogs, but how they are used. As far as the community that uses them becomes more and more agressive, there is a point where many people (as I did in the last year and half) just had enough of this crap.?

I have to question the accuracy of your statements, considering you couldn’t even properly name the selfish jobs present in Stormblood. Dragoon? A selfish job with no party buffs? Dragoon was one of the meta staples in SB (and HW) thanks to Battle Litany and its synergy with BRD, and through piercing resistance down giving both BRD and MCH a 5% damage gain, which was monumental for those two jobs. There was also Dragon Sight, which, while not as contributing as Litany or piercing, was also a buff. Samurai was the only true selfish melee in SB. Monk had Brotherhood, but it couldn’t compete as much with Dragoon and Ninja.

Nobody wanted Dragoon? In STORMBLOOD??? When piercing still existed and SB BRD interact with critical hit and Crit buffs? There were physical ranged that flat out refused to join statics if a DRG was not present. Dragoon and Bard were the dream team DPS pair in SB. MCH to a lesser extent, but any BRD or MCH who cared about their damage would not be happy unless a DRG was present.

Perhaps before you start telling others to fact check, you should also do some fact checking yourself.

[ForteNightshade]

Daeriion tackled some of this nonsense already. So I needn't repeat what they said. Instead, I'll address the rest.

Again you put words he didn't said and clearly know that because "we know what he is talking about" is very different from "he said he is adding it".

I never said this. You even quoted my exact response, which was, "They used a UI plugin which put abilities timers on the party list, something Yoshida has even said they're considering doing themselves."

Note the word "considering" and how it isn't an affirmation. What I said was precisely that, the dev team considering overhauling the UI based on the third party tools people have been using. I don't really think that needs further elaboration.

Another straight lie, a friend of mine was using those to escape AFK bans, and both of them were blocked. There were other ways people found to avoid those two and it is even in one of the weekly update letters (as far as you are talking straight lies as I showed above, i will not waste time to look for this one).

I do, however, want to touch on this because I also know several entire raid groups who used this specific plugin. In fact, you mention Xeno several times now yet if you happened to do even the slightest research, you'd know his discord is where a lot of people found out about it. And where clips of what happened with Bagel and Hiiro were posted along with reddit. Just because your friend used them that didn't work doesn't mean SE targeted any of these plugins.

Talking very specifically about Stormblood, people were complaining so much about dragoon and samurai because they had no party buffs and nobody wanted them in their parties. So there was an issue with selfish jobs, but on the other end. And I personally don't see issue with haveing ACT and FFlogs, but how they are used. As far as the community that uses them becomes more and more agressive, there is a point where many people (as I did in the last year and half) just had enough of this crap.

Tell me you haven't raided in Stormblood without telling me you haven't raided in Stormblood.

Jokes aside, I'm going to assume this was a hilarious typo on your part considering Dragoon was one of the most overpowered jobs of that era. Not only does it still have Battle Litany and Dragon Sight, ya know, two raid buffs. Stormblood was when it gave the Piercing debuff, which was a permanent 5% damage buff to both Bard and Machinist. Dragoon's presence was more a lock than any other job in the entire game and was considered "The Big Three" alongside Ninja and Bard as the three most insanely overpowered comp you could have. So much so, Dragoon's UcoB clears were more double Monk, Samurai and Black Mage combined.

With that said, you're still missing my point. The issue wasn't simply how powerful the comp was but that selfish jobs actively hurt your parse ranking due to them not contributing any buffs and FFlogs using personal damage instead of raid damage. If that system remained going into Shadowbringers, Samurai, White Mage and every other selfish job would have remained dead on arrival for the precise same reason. The creator of FFlogs even admitted the introduction of rDPS was entirely due to the sheer abundance of Dancer padded logs essentially ruining the ranking system. Likewise, the current tier of Savage does not, in any way, necessitate two healers. It would be far more efficient to bring five DPS. So why have none of the speed kill or parse groups done it? Because FFlogs requires a standard 2/2/4 split. If that ever changes, you'll instantly see every upper midcore group and higher telling one of their healers to pick a melee they wanna play.

Many who have had enough yet the program which allows all these plugins to function is only a few years old and among the most popular things downloaded in relation to FFXIV. Even Casual players want it for the QoL features. What you're saying just isn't lining up with reality.

Sold 10 million only last year, what they don't do? Can you fact check at least one of your statements before trolling?

You do realize sold copies does not mean active players, yes? Unless, of course, you genuinely believe the advertising nonsense that "over 24 million players are playing." If so, then why are people saying WoW is failing when they have 60+ million according to their advertisements?

In reality, the number is significantly lower. Our best estimation is based on the Lucky Bancho unofficial census, putting the active playerbase at 1.33 million. 300k of that is roughly just above 1/4th. Wanna tell us all again how third party tools and mods aren't exceedingly popular?

[Kyssa]

The rule you are talking about is related with copyright songs. The FF system for playing makes it too hard for a song to sound close enough to recieve copy right claim. Otherwise I know at least 10 streams that would be banned even without the involvement of SE.

I think that it wouldn't be too difficult for the owners of the copyrights to prove should they chose to do so- kinda like the case with Under Pressure/Ice Ice Baby.

Point is, I think SE recognizes that barding is pretty harmless, and draws folks together, which is exactly why people complaining about it at all baffles me. What's the advantage to be had here? Loot, titles? Nah. Glory stealing from "real" bards? I mean, it seems a pretty petty issue to even complain about.

[Packetdancer]

Thordan normal / Thordan EX arena. (and nobody who ever did DSR could mistake the two)

Oh, you absolutely can. Let's say you're half-asleep doing one last trial roulette before bed, and then suddenly get Thordan normal; I'd posit it's absolutely possible to have a confused/shocked half-awake moment of "WAIT WHY AM I HERE THIS ISN'T PROG NIGHT WHAT IS GOING ON" as the arena fades in and music starts, to the point you let out an involuntary confused/panicked "waugh!?" noise on Discord voice that makes your FC-mate (also in the roulette) erupt into helpless laughter at your expense.

(I was definitely awake after that, though...)

[MrSigy]

. He intentionally didn't posted the addons, but I will not spread the video too. It was just a show how the battle can be fully automated because of the lack of control of addons.

Tbh you are missing the point entirely. ACT triggers are the real cheats, generally made by players themselves during when it's relevent and in my book is already too much yet world 1st players abuse them. These addons are blatently cheats and nobody would ever consider doing ultimate with them if they care about the content. Also they are only made/released a lot later into the release cycle where they become obsolete.

Your response gets the same reaction for me as Zepla complaining about these addons, I don't give 2 cents abouts your opinion because it's worthless and holds no meaning.

[Packetdancer]

I'm somewhat new'ish to the game- a little over a year- so this is news to me. However, as you pointed out, a mod is a mod is a mod. One shouldn't be okay, while another isn't.

Since you were mentioning bard performance tools when discussing "a mod is a mod is a mod", it's worth noting that so far as I know, the bard performance tools aren't a mod -- they don't modify the game process or files in any way -- they're just an external tool that generates keyboard events as if you were pressing the keys.

Functionally, it's the same as the dumb thing I tried the one and only time I tried (unsuccessfully) to perform one of my own compositions live in game; I hooked up my trusty Yamaha keyboard/synth to the computer, and wrote a simple little program that basically went "When I push this note, type 'R'." and so on. Using this, I could go into bard performance mode and play a simple little melody.

Or I could open Notepad and 'play music' into a text file, because each music-keyboard key was being treated as an alphanumeric-keyboard key. (Don't you just love the part of the melody that goes "wqe544y234te273654e"? That's my favorite!)

Now, this didn't work out well for me; my muscle memory wanted to play chords, and that gives bard performance mode indigestion. So it was a pretty failed experiment, and I tossed the little program out.

But so far as I know, the various bard performance tools do fundamentally the same thing, albeit in an automated manner -- they load a music file and then 'play notes' by generating keyboard keypresses, not by changing the game itself.

Now, there's certainly a discussion going on in the community about "third party tools" in general; a bard performance program is definitely a third-party tool that impacts how you play the game. So is AutoHotKey, a generic Windows utility for automating tasks based on a key press, which can be used to automate crafting (by virtue of having it press whatever keyboard key you've bound in-game to a crafting macro made with the game's own built-in macro system, and do so repeatedly in order to let you craft en masse while you walk away from the keys). So is Discord voice chat, as much as I hate that example being used. You could argue that fancy gaming keyboards that give you some macro keys qualify.

But none of those a mod, inasmuch as none modify the game itself.

(Now, you could argue that the Discord overlay is a mod, inasmuch as it does interpose itself into the game's process in order to render the overlay. Anyway.)

This isn't to say there might not be some which are mods you load into the game that can play the music directly. It's just that most of the bard tools I've seen floating around aren't of that sort; they're just a thing that functions as "I press the keyboard keys, music happens."

Now, whether you consider there to be a significant difference between third-party tools (e.g. things which impact your gaming experience in general but which do not themselves alter the game in any way) and mods (e.g. things that actually modify the game data files, executable code, or memory space in some fashion) is maybe an interesting debate to have. But there is a difference between them on a technical level, and I'd argue that while it's easy to say "nothing that modifies the game -- e.g., no mods -- is allowable", trying to blanket define all third-party tools as a no-go is a path to madness.

Do you have a Logitech keyboard? Presumably the Logitech G-Center or whatever the heck they call their gaming software is running, and since you can tie multiple keystrokes to a single key on that keyboard... that's a third party tool that impacts gameplay. Do you use Discord voice for callouts in your static? That's a third-party tool that impacts gameplay. (I also think it's a straw-man example that derails these threads more often than not, but...) Do you use websites that track the spawn times of NMs in Eureka zones, so you know whether or not you can get Pazuzu to pop? Those websites are -- say it with me -- third party tools, under a strict reading of the term.

Now, obviously, the devs are not going to enforce a blanket ban on third-party tools, because that would be insanity, as the definition is simply too broad to be meaningful; many people have "third-party software" that impacts their gameplay which they don't even think about -- gaming peripheral software that's automatically installed for Logitech, Corsair, or Razer devices, which lets you change the DPI your mouse movement is registered as, or whatever else -- and SQEX would more or less end up banning the entirety of the PC playerbase. Which, one assumes, is not the outcome desired by any party involved in the debate.

So it does seem worthwhile to draw a distinction between what's a third-party tool (like a bard performance thing that just presses keys) and what's an actual mod that changes how the game itself functions (e.g. stuff like the Dalamud plugin system), rather than conflating the two; even if you disapprove of both, there is still a difference between the two classes of "things that alter your game experience in some fashion".

[Myrany]

I don't care why someone uses a mod or for what. If they are dumb enough to harass someone with it or broadcast they are using a mod (by whatever means) they earned the suspension or ban. Nothing more really needs to be said.

[Kyssa]

Since you were mentioning bard performance tools when discussing "a mod is a mod is a mod", it's worth noting that so far as I know, the bard performance tools aren't a mod -- they don't modify the game process or files in any way -- they're just an external tool that generates keyboard events as if you were pressing the keys.


So it does seem worthwhile to draw a distinction between what's a third-party tool (like a bard performance thing that just presses keys) and what's an actual mod that changes how the game itself functions (e.g. stuff like the Dalamud plugin system), rather than conflating the two; even if you disapprove of both, there is still a difference between the two classes of "things that alter your game experience in some fashion".

For quotes sake, I shortened your post- but thank you for such an informative response! I really do appreciate it, and what you say certainly makes sense.