A simple solution to combat all the cheating!

[Ranaku]

Please SE for the love of Hydaelyn please finally add an easy to access report button into the game and please just employ a small team of people who review reports for each datacenter and that's it.

That's all it takes to combat bots and cheaters and all that crap without having to purge half of your playerbase cause everyone uses mods and plugins at this point i guess.

I mean why the heck do we still have to fill out gigantic forms through some really hidden report function just to report the simplest of violations? It can't be that hard to just implement the same report function which we can already use to report rmt quickly just for all the other offenses and having a couple more gamemasters to take care of all the cheaters/reports won't hurt your budget more than having to ban half the community.

[LisSquid]

Genuinely surprised most people complain about seeing the Gaol as often as they do considering SE makes it a task and a half to report things.

+1

[Doc_Seraph]

Genuinely surprised most people complain about seeing the Gaol as often as they do considering SE makes it a task and a half to report things.

+1

Sometimes kupo you will have said something crazy in like July and you log in December to find out something you can't even recall landed you in jail. I mean do the crime do the time is all well but there is a reason limitations exist kupo <3 lol

[Rolder50]

+1

I was very surprised when doing CC that there was no right click report option on individuals. Seems pretty simple too, right click report for cheating or toxic activity (spamming nice match or good job kinda stuff), get enough reports on one person it goes to GM review. Then the GM can look at combat logs or chat logs for proof of cheating and issue judgement.

[KageTokage]

I got tired of reporting bots strictly because of how annoying having to type out a full report is when they're seldom actioned on top of new bots seeming to pop up on a daily basis.

If the main issue really is just a lack of reports coming in, this would actually help with getting cheaters banned.

[Kes13a]

they certainly need something improved, because their current system seems to favour cheaters and bots over people who actually play the game

[Raikai]

But how do you even tell that people are cheating/using mods?

Unless this cheating is blatantly breaking things like floating where you should not or running ahead before the match starts. Otherwise... only if they are telling you about that out loud.

[Ranaku]

Most of the cheating in pvp and in the "open" world is really blatantly. Like sprint that never wears off or all of that which can be for sure seen in the logs.

As i said this isn't about other mods and plugins that don't affect others, what i mean are bots who teleport through the world or farm at a spot for weeks without ever logging off the game which no human could do. Or in pvp where people use cheats which you can also detect through the log cause no human could switch between multiple targets in mere seconds to killsteal etc.

As i said this would be the best solution without intrusive anticheat softwares and bringing the ban hammer down to all mod/plugin users. The modding community and the plugin users are way too many as that SE could even think about banning them all cause if they would do that investors would give them hell for it. At this point ever third or even second player is using mods/plugins that are just quality of life changes and i don't think SE can afford to ban half the playerbase but if people start to cheat their way through content that actually destroys the fun for others, like pvp, they need to do something.

Edit: Also as i said, getting more gamemasters into the team especially for that reason would be also great since that way if the report is coming in while the match is still going on the gamemaster, if the system allows that, could look at the situation themselves and decide if the reported person is actually speedhacking, glitching and using scripts with which they swap between targets in split seconds. That would cost way less than all the sub money that would be lost if we ban everyone using third party stuff.

[Packetdancer]

Or in pvp where people use cheats which you can also detect through the log cause no human could switch between multiple targets in mere seconds to killsteal etc.

While in essence I agree, this one thing I feel a need to correct you on: it is indeed possible to switch targets around very fast as a human. Specifically, you can bind the party list, enemy aggro list (or opposing team in CC, as it is treated internally as the enemy aggro list), or even the alliance list (though that gets wonky) to the mouse wheel, right in FFXIV's own input settings and keybindings.

I have the mouse wheel (on its own) bound to scrolling through the enemy aggro list. If I am tanking and someone pulls aggro on a mob, I can look at that list and just whip the mouse wheel up or down to get right to that target, provoke or ranged attack, and all is good. I then have Alt + the mouse wheel bound to the party list, allowing me to do the same speedy zip-the-selection through the party list quickly as a healer. (My zoom in/out is rebound to Control + the mouse wheel.)

It takes some practice to land perfectly on your target in the list instead of one above or one below, but I made that binding change a year and a half ago and I have had a lot of practice with it now, and thus muscle memory of exactly how far I need to spin the mouse wheel to get to position 2, 3, etc. (Though it also probably means if I ever use a different MMO mouse with slightly different scroll wheel sensitivity, I'm screwed.) And while it was originally meant solely as an aid to finding that one mob in the list while tanking, it has proven to be an unplanned but considerable benefit in Crystalline Conflict due to the enemy team display being functionally a reskinned enemy aggro list; I can indeed flip from one target to another in mere instants, with nothing other than a standard USB MMO mouse.

Now, if you mean whipping between multiple targets and attacking them all in like, under a GCD, that's obviously cheating. But if you mean seeing that someone in the enemy list has a potentially-disastrous cast being prepared and it needs to be dealt with right now? And then immediately switching back to your original target before the GCD cooldown is even over? It is absolutely possible to select them almost instantaneously to deal with them just via the mouse wheel method (and switch back afterwards), once you've got the practice to land on the entry you intend to.

Like, I have the enemy in position 3 on the list targeted, but the one in position 5 needs to be addressed right now? I can scroll down <this> far and they're instantly selected, I do whatever I need, and then I can switch back to the original target even while the action is processing. (I can't do anything to the original target I switched back to until my GCD is off cooldown, obviously, but I can sure as heck have them selected and waiting again for that next GCD almost instantaneously.)

This is also useful with the party list, as you can select a party member needing a heal woven in; changing targets does not cancel a cast, so I can hit attack on a boss, select the target player while the castbar is still going, immediately weave the heal, and be back on the boss before the GCD is off cooldown. (No adds? Any movement of the scroll wheel without a modifier key re-targets the boss with this setup; there's only one entry in the aggro list, so no matter how many slots you move through, you only ever select the boss.)

Admittedly, I may regret sharing this trick now that it has proven so useful in CC, if I find more people using it against me... but it also doesn't seem entirely fair to keep a mechanical trick like that to myself when it really does make target management orders of magnitude easier, including in CC matches.

[KageTokage]

But how do you even tell that people are cheating/using mods?

Unless this cheating is blatantly breaking things like floating where you should not or running ahead before the match starts. Otherwise... only if they are telling you about that out loud.

Bots follow an extremely stiff pattern of movement/actions with little to no deviation.

The most common type of cheating in PvP is automatic skill triggers to secure kills or deny actions from the opposing team, and as with the bots, it happens with an unnatural level of speed and consistency that becomes pretty obvious when the same player keeps CCing you every time you try to LB or some such.