They need to find a way to detect XIV Alexander and ban people

[Packetdancer]

Imagine thinking that using all third party to improve your parse, call out for you and such is normal in multiplayer game tho. All those cacbot, alexander plugins people cant even raid on patch day until their 3rd party stuff fixed.

I've said before that I don't actually have any issue with Cactbot; people need to learn the fights in order to make timelines for them, and having Cactbot call mechanics seems to me little different than having a human raid-caller call them. (Save, y'know, not slipping up when tired. Not that I ever do that as a raid caller. *nervous smile, small eye twitch*)

And I will note that I know people who have audio processing issues -- I have them to some extent (if enough people are talking at once my brain goes "NOPE" and just stops processing any of those audio streams), and my best friend is even moreso. For them, using Cactbot with a visual callout -- where it says "Cleaving left" or whatever on-screen as text -- is probably a lot friendlier to that than a raid-caller (who is not going to take the time to type callouts in chat unless they're way faster at typing mid-mechanic than I am).

I will grant that Cactbot being able to call things slightly earlier than I can as a raid-caller does potentially give an advantage on some mechanics (P3N Experimental Fireplume, from what I'm told), but on others it can't call things very well in an automated manner where a human raid-caller can. For instance, I'm told that for Shackles of Time in P1S, it just looks at whoever gets the debuff and goes "Move to <whatever that person isn't on>." If you follow that blindly, and the group has agreed on, say, "fire is always safe, if you have the debuff move to light", when Cactbot says "Move to light" following that blindly is gonna end badly. (Which is how I learned what that callout was in Cactbot; someone blindly followed the automated callout in a PUG practice run of P1S and got 'sploded when the debuffed person moved as agreed-upon.)

So I think it sort of comes out in the wash.

And yeah, if you rely on Cactbot's callouts and follow them blindly, you maybe can't raid on patch day. But if you rely on your static's raid-caller, you probably can't raid effectively if they've got laryngitis or some family conflict and you run without a raid-caller one week either. (Or do PF with no Discord voice, or whatever.) Those are both problems, and moreover I don't see them as fundamentally different problems in terms of either their nature or severity. Callouts -- whether Cactbot or your raid-caller -- should only ever be a guide when you're first learning the fight, and a sanity-check on your own read of mechanics from then onwards.

Now, stuff like the cheaty tool that was shuffling around combat waymarks mid-fight to indicate to the entire party where to go for mechanics, that I find a bit beyond what's reasonable. And demonstrably, so do the developers, because that one they put an end to pretty quickly, hence why we can no longer move waymarks mid-combat.

XIVAlexander, I've got mixed feelings on. This game's netcode is highly sensitive to terrible ping, moreso than I think might be reasonable; the way the animation lock works is a little weird (albeit for understandable technical reasons), and folks who are playing on NA servers but are in South America and such are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to weaving-heavy jobs as a result. And that can be alleviated to some degree with a high-quality gaming VPN (since you can route around slow stuff and make the last-mile to the game servers as low-latency as possible), but even with that taken into account there's only so much you can realistically do to alleviate that problem solely through routing your network traffic somewhere.

So I don't really like XIVAlexander, but if someone's using it with sane parameters to make their animation lock performance (in, say, Argentina) roughly equivalent to mine (where I have very low ping just by virtue of where I live in relation to the servers), I'm also not going to really begrudge them that.

[Shougun]

It is some matter of opinon but I did want to offer a counter voice in that I think DBM like tools are potentially extremely helpful and can have a huge impact on quality of play. Content is portion knowledge portion execution. It's true if you have poor execution (gameplay skills in general) then well.... good luck! lol. But having no need to learn, nor remember, yet have high accuracy and info that is usually impractical to know in the time frames you already know it... well I believe that is a significant boon to your ability to do well if you're a person that doesn't quickly memorize / get content (or want to be that person).

In WoW I'd just show up without bothering to learn and 'get it', without I'd probably make mistakes by forgetting or not memorizing certain more complicated bits. It absolutely made a difference to me, and I believe it does for others too. Just maybe not everyone, obviously .

Also made content far less stressful since I wasn't really worried about if something was coming or not. You were told as it happened in a very accurate and informative way.

My point though is if you took a snapshot of a world with DBM and without I do believe more people would be doing more content and doing better in the DBM world, I strongly believe it has an actual impact to the game. Some people would be the same in both worlds, but as a total audience I think there is a change.

[DkFusion]

LOL - So after reading this thread I almost pee'd myself a wee bit.

Winning comment - "You can reduce your ping to 'zero'. While I'm at it, I'm going to look for a car mod to reduce my distance to work to zero. No mod changes the time it takes a packet to travel to instant. Sorry to tell you.

Should make a category in the forums called "Cancel Culture" because that's what all this crap reminds me of. How about instead of attacking mods we all come together and fight to get some of these great QoL features baked into the game....so everyone has ease of access and can enjoy complete control of the way they experience the game.

But instead....lets all just make sure those that acquire tools to enhance the enjoyment that don't AFFECT you in the slightest are yanked. Because dreary misery loves company amirite.

And it's very clear the OP does not use the mini cac solver, because if they did they would now how literally worthless it is.

[Packetdancer]

Winning comment - "You can reduce your ping to 'zero'. While I'm at it, I'm going to look for a car mod to reduce my distance to work to zero. No mod changes the time it takes a packet to travel to instant. Sorry to tell you.

To be fair, they're not entirely wrong, albeit they phrased it wrong.

So far as I know (without digging too deeply into the game's netcode to verify this), the client wants an acknowledgment that the packet saying "I weaved this ability" got there before it lets you weave another ability. So if you have a 100ms ping time to the server, you can weave an ability and the client sends that to the server and it takes 100ms to get there, and the server goes "Okay, ability received" and it takes 100ms for that to get back, and the server goes "Cool, excellent, now you can weave another ability." So you'd have 200ms after one weave until you could get your double-weave in.

If you have a 500ms ping time, however, now you have to wait an entire second after one weave before the game will accept the second, which means people with a terrible ping are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to jobs that have a weave-heavy playstyle.

My understanding is that -- and I'm vastly oversimplifying here -- XIVAlexander doesn't actually reduce your ping time, it just tells the client "Yeah the packet got there" so that the client goes "Cool, you can weave your next ability now." Meaning someone with a 500ms ping could have XIVAlexander go "Tell the game the packet got there after 200ms" and instead of having to wait an entire second to weave, they can now do so after 200ms, just like the person who has the non-terrible connection. Meaning that now they can double-weave effectively, putting them on an equal footing. But so far as I can see from skimming the code for this thing, you could hypothetically tell it to reduce your perceived ping time to 0, meaning the instant the packet was sent it's treated as received and you can weave another ability.

However, when you move past a reasonable number of abilities sent in a given amount of time, one assumes the server goes "yeaaaah that's not right, we're gonna flag this" and you might (quite rightly) get banned.

So, like, someone in Argentina using XIVAlexander to reduce their perceived round-trip time to something akin to mine, to account for a terrible ping preventing weaving? I'm not gonna really begrudge them leveling the playing field. Someone using XIVAlexander to lower their perceived round-trip time to something where they can consistently triple-weave, that I feel is way less cool and deserves a ban.

Hence my "I have mixed feelings on that tool" position.

[Shougun]

To be fair, they're not entirely wrong, albeit they phrased it wrong.

So far as I know (without digging too deeply into the game's netcode to verify this), the client wants an acknowledgment that the packet saying "I weaved this ability" got there before it lets you weave another ability. So if you have a 100ms ping time to the server, you can weave an ability and the client sends that to the server and it takes 100ms to get there, and the server goes "Okay, ability received" and it takes 100ms for that to get back, and the server goes "Cool, excellent, now you can weave another ability." So you'd have 200ms after one weave until you could get your double-weave in.

If you have a 500ms ping time, however, now you have to wait an entire second after one weave before the game will accept the second, which means people with a terrible ping are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to jobs that have a weave-heavy playstyle.

My understanding is that -- and I'm vastly oversimplifying here -- XIVAlexander doesn't actually reduce your ping time, it just tells the client "Yeah the packet got there" so that the client goes "Cool, you can weave your next ability now." Meaning someone with a 500ms ping could have XIVAlexander go "Tell the game the packet got there after 200ms" and instead of having to wait an entire second to weave, they can now do so after 200ms, just like the person who has the non-terrible connection. Meaning that now they can double-weave effectively, putting them on an equal footing. But so far as I can see from skimming the code for this thing, you could hypothetically tell it to reduce your perceived ping time to 0, meaning the instant the packet was sent it's treated as received and you can weave another ability.

However, when you move past a reasonable number of abilities sent in a given amount of time, one assumes the server goes "yeaaaah that's not right, we're gonna flag this" and you might (quite rightly) get banned.

So, like, someone in Argentina using XIVAlexander to reduce their perceived round-trip time to something akin to mine, to account for a terrible ping preventing weaving? I'm not gonna really begrudge them leveling the playing field. Someone using XIVAlexander to lower their perceived round-trip time to something where they can consistently triple-weave, that I feel is way less cool and deserves a ban.

Hence my "I have mixed feelings on that tool" position.

Yeah the tool doesn't actually do anything to your 'actual' ping (doesn't magically make your internet better), which I agree is messing with the whole conversation lol.

What is changing if I can read right is a hard coded 500 ms delay that everyone has. When you have a bad ping on top of this, then it obviously puts you at a disadvantage than one who has good ping. So you can count 500ms as the 0 starting point in a situation without this tool and therefore ping is the ping.

Now though you introduce the ability to change that though and 0 is no longer simply 0. Of course laws of physics still apply :P, and it's still not magically making your internet better (but it does do stuff).

The developer says themselves:

Reduces the negative effects from playing with high latency (ping).

When you use an action, the client will apply 500ms animation lock, which will prevent you from using next action for a short amount of time. When the server processes the request, it will give your game client instructions about the supposed duration of animation lock (usually 600ms). Ideally, you should be able to use next action 600ms after the previous action, but the game client will let you use next action 600ms after server response, meaning that you're waiting for time taken for server response + animation lock time. Ideally, XivAlexander would simply get rid of time taken for server response part, but the server will rarely respond immediately even on sub-1ms ping, so you are given choices on how to make time taken for server response exclude your ping.

WARNING: Because of how it works, this addon is only a step away from flat out cheating. Changing temporal constants in code below the limit means you're effectively claiming that your latency is below zero, which is just impossible. Do NOT modify temporal constants in code, or you ARE cheating. You have been warned.

Example
[0.0s] Action A Request
[0.5s] Action B Request
[0.6s] Action A Response (1.0s lock)
[1.1s] Action B Response (1.0s lock)
By default, the client will let you input at 2.1s.
This addon will force the next input to be accepted at 2.0s.


Subtracts the round trip time measured from ICMP ping (or TCP_INFO_v0 if unavailable) from animation lock information response from the server.

When your ping fluctuates, it might take more than 500ms to receive a response from server, in which case, by game design, you are allowed to use next action regardless. Your client will receive two responses from the server, and only the latter animation lock information will take effect. Mode 2 and 3 will compensate for that by adding up animation lock information received.

Mode 2: Simulate RTT (75ms)
Simulates the environment where you would be receiving server response exactly 75ms after you use an action. From testing on sub-1ms connection to server, responses often took somewhere between 50ms and 100ms. Sometimes it takes less or more, but in any case, 75ms is the average.

Mode 3: Simulate Normalized RTT and Latency
Same with Mode 2, but will sample time taken for server response - round trip time measured from ICMP ping values, and use stabilized value in place of 75ms.

Which does read to me that even people with decent ping could use the tool for better responsiveness, but if you had king ping or truly truly god awful ping then there isn't too much the tool could do.

Not that I'm suggesting I think it's some great evil people with bad ping are getting to enjoy combat better (in general I think addons is a sign of strength of game, and often a symbol of stuff Devs themselves may better understand their player's desires), this tool allowing some a situation similar to those with great ping, but I do like the conversation not to be "it does nothing and has no impact on the game bro, don't complain about it" or "it literally bends warp space time to make you a better more fit human player" .

[Packetdancer]

The developer says themselves:

And with better detail than I did in my hasty post, so thank you for tossing that one in there.

[Lunalepsy]

Stay tuned for more posts!

[BaconBits]

They need to find a way to detect your mom so they can tell her how proud she should be of you.

[Mezzoforte]

What the title says. I just found out that it literally tells you things in the game that you shouldn't know prior. For example. WHen you do the Gold Saucer Mini Cactpot, it will LIGHT UP the ones you want to click for the highest reward... That's absurd.

Further. If any contest comes back like the Firmament, it will literally tell these people what to use each step to get the best quality. It can also adjust their ping to be near zero, allowing them to hit skills/nodes much faster than others. This doesn't need to be allowed and there has got to be a way to detect it. Clearly it's reading something in the game files to allow it to tell you what buttons on the mini cact you wanna click. Which is against ToS.

The minicacpot solution is a 3rd grade tier solution. If you are always solving for the two highest rewards you do it the same way, every single time, with every single ticket. The mod doesn't do anything you shouldnt already be doing yourself. So its not really relevant. Adjusting peoples ping isn't an issue as that is more helpful than bad. Some people have bad ping and if it helps them more power to them. People already use crafting macros and flowcharts to tell you how exactly to craft everything optimally. The mod isn't doing anything that you aren't already doing unless you intentionally do stuff suboptimally then that is your choice. I don't use any mods myself and I think it is fine. I don't understand why it even matters? Yoshi has said time and time again its ok to use third party shit if you dont use it to harass people, you dont talk about it constantly, and you arent using it to make the game look worse to media like screenshots, nudes of lalas, etc. If you want a solution to what you view is a big problem send Yoshi a personal email.

[Shougun]

The minicacpot solution is a 3rd grade tier solution. If you are always solving for the two highest rewards you do it the same way, every single time, with every single ticket. The mod doesn't do anything you shouldnt already be doing yourself. So its not really relevant. Adjusting peoples ping isn't an issue as that is more helpful than bad. Some people have bad ping and if it helps them more power to them. People already use crafting macros and flowcharts to tell you how exactly to craft everything optimally. The mod isn't doing anything that you aren't already doing unless you intentionally do stuff suboptimally then that is your choice. I don't use any mods myself and I think it is fine. I don't understand why it even matters? Yoshi has said time and time again its ok to use third party shit if you dont use it to harass people, you dont talk about it constantly, and you arent using it to make the game look worse to media like screenshots, nudes of lalas, etc. If you want a solution to what you view is a big problem send Yoshi a personal email.

Yoshida plz become my penpal :3


Also just on the last bit, technically, as far as I can remember, he never said using third party tools (those particularly that read game memory) are okay.

In fact I clearly remember him saying those are not allowed, some are worse than others but they can't sit and pick and choose so none of them are okay. However they're not reading your memory, nor performing witch-hunts on the more benign systems, so harassing people is a surefire way to get in trouble vs not.

So it's more "wont ask, don't tell" than he says it's okay. If you say here you use xivalexander I'm assuming someone could report you and you could be punished (I mean this has happened for other things in game, in situations that weren't harassment). Particularly they use their own systems for this, as it seems if you did a youtube hunt on people it wont have much impact if any so long as there isn't harassment they can't verify on their own end. So going on twitter to say you use it wouldn't really do much unless you harassed someone, but saying you used it inside the game would be an issue.

Just want to make sure people aren't going around saying Yoshida greenlit third party tools so long as you don't say their name three times lol.