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

[Driavna]

Yes, I don't care, because they don't affect me. I can still do this content without them. Why would it matter to me if someone decides to play this game in easy mode?

Last time that an addon went "too far" SE removed the ability to put markers during combat. Sure, not a big deal for the most part, but sometimes, particular in 24m raids, was useful if you happen to end with players that don't really know what to do and you did not have time to put them before someone pulled.

I rather SE add their own addons support to FFXIV so they don't have to resort to such heavy handed solutions when something they don't approved is created.

[LianaThorne]

Last time that an addon went "too far" SE removed the ability to put markers during combat. Sure, not a big deal for the most part, but sometimes, particular in 24m raids, was useful if you happen to end with players that don't really know what to do and you did not have time to put them before someone pulled.

I rather SE add their own addons support to FFXIV so they don't have to resort to such heavy handed solutions when something they don't approved is created.

No, they shouldn't. All it's going to do, if official add-on support is given to PC players, is piss off the console crowd even further since they won't have access to it. I feel like people don't actually understand the limitations of modding/using plugins on console and should take a few minutes to read about it.

Keeping it unsupported and a general..."We're not getting involved unless it hits our profits or our legal team."...is the right way to do it in my opinion.

[Driavna]

No, they shouldn't. All it's going to do, if official add-on support is given to PC players, is piss off the console crowd even further since they won't have access to it. I feel like people don't actually understand the limitations of modding/using plugins on console and should take a few minutes to read about it.

Keeping it unsupported and a general..."We're not getting involved unless it hits our profits or our legal team."...is the right way to do it in my opinion.

By adding add-on support what I mean is to do what Blizzard did with WoW, or other games like Warhammer Online/Wildstar, and is creating a LUA API that people will use to make addons with it. I really fail to see how hard will be to make it also available for console unless we are talking about some limitations imposed by Sony.

[Shurrikhan]

By adding add-on support what I mean is to do what Blizzard did with WoW, or other games like Warhammer Online/Wildstar, and is creating a LUA API that people will use to make addons with it. I really fail to see how hard will be to make it also available for console unless we are talking about some limitations imposed by Sony.

^

Note that this also gives more control over the information available to said addons. Blizzard thereby has tighter control and means to prevent addons from seeing anything players themselves could not see without addons than XIV does, allowing us to forgo heavy-handed "solutions" like removing the ability to place waymarkers during combat.

[Lieri]

The OP is having problem with tools that tell people what to do. WoW lets DBM addon to be created which essentially tells you every mechanic in a raid. Adding LUA just makes addons "legal" but you can be sure there will be loopholes here and there that the players will make use of. In the end adding LUA will also mean they need to have a dedicated people constantly updating and monitoring what is possible/impossible to do via addons, if unfair advantage is a concern.

[Packetdancer]

By adding add-on support what I mean is to do what Blizzard did with WoW, or other games like Warhammer Online/Wildstar, and is creating a LUA API that people will use to make addons with it. I really fail to see how hard will be to make it also available for console unless we are talking about some limitations imposed by Sony.

So, as noted in an earlier post of mine in this very thread, I was deeply involved in WildStar modding. I am what you might call a True Believer in terms of the potential value of mods, and anyone here who was in the WildStar closed beta stands a solid chance of recognizing my screen name in that context. (Heck, even some people who weren't in the closed beta might recognize my name in that context.)

Suffice it to say that I really appreciate the power that mods put in the hands of the playerbase, and the sort of quality-of-life and accessibility improvements a good mod API empowers them to make.

And despite all of that, as I noted in that earlier post, I am absolutely convinced that Square-Enix putting a mod API into this game at this point would be an immense mistake.

As background, it's necessary to understand that I and other modders spent like a year working with Jon "Bitwise" Wiesman (the lead client developer for WildStar, and thus the person behind the add-on API) to ensure the add-on API not only had features we need, but did not have features that could be misused horribly.

At his request, in addition to writing genuinely beneficial mods, a small group of us engaged in deliberately writing the most malicious things we could think of. We sat down with intent to abuse the API in the worst ways possible... not to distribute those mods outside of our group, but to find what would need to change before release. And unfortunately, some of the things we managed to come up with required some non-trivial changes to the system.

Originally, for instance, all of WildStar's own UI was written using the add-on system -- the goal was that if Carbine could do it with the game UI, we should be able to as modders. But one person came up with a way to use (if I recall correctly) the in-game mailbox API to have a mod which quietly stole little bits of your money at a time if it saw the mod author nearby (and thus knew he was online); it would silently open a mail and put just a little bit of your money into the mail, and since he was online (and the mod knew it), a matching mod on his side would open the mail, take the money, and delete the note (so you wouldn't see it in your outgoing/sent messages). This proved the way mail was handled in-game needed to be changed, and some of the functionality needed to be moved into places that weren't accessible via add-ons.

There was a mod demonstrating how you could modify the minimap and UI to cheat at PvP, which as I recall necessitated a not-small change in how network replication of objects was handled. Heck, I used the Windows clipboard as a cheaty backdoor in a proof-of-concept about how to use the deliberately-designed-to-prevent-botting mod API to write a bot.

I am sure we created an immense number of headaches for Bitwise. But the effort was well-spent, because WildStar launched with a comprehensive modding API that had already been battle-tested and corrected a lot of potential loopholes that could have empowered cheating.

The issue is that WildStar was able to do that because Carbine had a ton of time before the game was released, so the sort of necessary changes could be made. And keep in mind, WildStar was also coming from a place where it had been designed with add-ons in mind from the start, meaning there were a lot of potential issues they'd already designed around.

Would I love it if Square-Enix had an add-on system for FFXIV, so I could make some UI changes? Absolutely; if they released an add-on system, I expect that roughly 45 minutes after I got my hands on it I'd have the loot window modified to add a 'Pass All' or 'Greed All' button, just as a start. And I have a laundry list of other quality-of-life changes I'd make going on from there; I have strong opinions about UX, and there are a number of places where this game's UX choices baffle me.

But should they release that sort of system? Honestly, at this point in the game's lifecycle, I firmly believe that would be an immense mistake. Without the option to easily rework the necessary chunks of the game, any official add-on API would either have to be extremely limited (and thus disappointing to many people) or run the risk of introducing the same sort of massive but not-immediately-obvious loopholes we spent time with Bitwise finding and plugging in WildStar.

[Driavna]

...

I see what you mean now about changes needed to core FFXIV code, in that case I think you are right. Good post and explanation BTW.

I guess SE need to keep improve/adding QoL. A quick example is how we can only hide all debuff instead of having an option to only show those that are important to us (like trick attack) or stuff we can remove from other players.