Mods and cheat engine

[LittleImp]

I'd like to figure out what peoples' opinions on this is...

If it's cheating to use ACT's bot that gives players mechanic callouts, which are themselves limited and only really get into specifics when stuff is on the players' screen already (if at all), then would static members giving callouts to people also be considered cheating?

Cactbot can:
1. Solve mechanics that aren't visible on the client yet.
2. Solve mechanics with a less than 10ms reaction time.
3. Compile a series of mechanical queues taking place over a long time, and then provide a solution to a later mechanic, removing the need for anyone to remember anything
4. Make calculations based on Entity coordinates which tell you where to stand.
5. Can provide 8 separate callouts to 8 different people simultaneously.
6. Works out of the box with no practice or prog.

This is not at all comparable to a human shotcaller, who cannot do many of those things, and also has to spend prog time practicing to be able to do the ones they can. It fundamentally automates an aspect of fight execution that was not intended to be automated.

Both accomplish the same thing, and you still need to know how to resolve the mechanic on both.

Cactbot makes callouts like "NE/NW are safe" or "Look SW". Many of the callouts it makes completely removes any necessity of needing to actually understand how 90% of the mechanic works, and it provides personalized callouts based on your characters specific circumstances. Those kind of shotcalls are really only seen in places like RichCOB, where 7 people knew what they were doing and could afford to make individual callouts for one member.

Is it not more cumbersome to, say... and taking something easy that a lot of people have done... take Construct 7's math thing. There are people with dyscalculia, and I do know someone whose issue was so severe she had issues clearing TEA's Limit Cut because she couldn't count. She had to resort to shapes rather than counting dots. When farming the Lighthouse, I had to resolve my own math mechanic and also look at her number and health in advance to tell her which number she had to go. And on one run, I had to do it for her and someone else who wasn't getting the mechanic.

Sure, it's a third party tool and that's a no-no. But if it's just to call mechanics out for people and give them a heads up on what they have to do, is it really cheating?

It doesn't just call out mechanics. It solves mechanics, and tells you what to do. It is not comparable to a human shot-caller. I don't really mind if people with rare disabilities use certain things for accessibility purposes, and there's an important difference between a trigger that just says "Three" when you get 3 above your head, versus a cactbot module that reads 3 different divebomb coordinates and then actively tells you where you need to stand because you have 3.

[Midareyukki]

It doesn't just call out mechanics. It solves mechanics, and tells you what to do. It is not comparable to a human shot-caller. I don't really mind if people with rare disabilities use certain things for accessibility purposes, and there's an important difference between a trigger that just says "Three" when you get 3 above your head, versus a cactbot module that reads 3 different divebomb coordinates and then actively tells you where you need to stand because you have 3.

So was I resolving mechanics for other people. So were my friends resolving mechanics for me when I couldn't tell which direction to go on E10S's shadows. Or when the party leader called out where to go for during E9S's pizza cuts. But just because I had people doing call-outs, it didn't mean I didn't bother to learn the fight or resolve the mechanics by myself. Hell, often times I wanted to do it on my own and muted the person in question because I didn't want to be told where to go when I didn't need to.

[HyoMinPark]

So was I resolving mechanics for other people. So were my friends resolving mechanics for me when I couldn't tell which direction to go on E10S's shadows. Or when the party leader called out where to go for during E9S's pizza cuts. But just because I had people doing call-outs, it didn't mean I didn't bother to learn the fight or resolve the mechanics by myself. Hell, often times I wanted to do it on my own and muted the person in question because I didn't want to be told where to go when I didn't need to.

E10S has been the only fight I’ve heavily relied on things like callouts in a while because I couldn’t see his shadows very well. The design of black shadow on top of black boss just could not be processed by my eyeballs. I agree with the overall sentiment that using shotcalls—be it TTS triggers or a raid leader calling them—doesn’t mean one doesn’t learn the fight or the mechanic. Like with my Nael example: having ACT call out “Dynamo > Thermo” doesn’t absolve the player of properly understanding and executing it. If you don’t understand what Dynamo does or what Thermo does—or what Chariot does especially—you cannot react accordingly in a timely manner and you will get killed.