A simple solution to combat all the cheating!

[Kes13a]

Problem is that it also will detect all damage meter programs and without these people who make guides well can't make them anymore. Which means at the end of the day we also won't have rotation guides. It's not just "seeing your toenails" anymore.

Also you will be affected by it too, SE would nuke themselves into a dark age. Killing half your playerbase would be a economical suicide or do you think with less than half the budget they would be able to keep their standards and income up to make investors happy? Of course not.

how do you know that having a game that comes down hard on cheaters wont bring even a larger group of people in? you dont. just like you cant say they would lose half their player base.

[Kaurhz]

how do you know that having a game that comes down hard on cheaters wont bring even a larger group of people in? you dont. just like you cant say they would lose half their player base.

Because it fractures a large portion of the player base, effectively in some shape or form shunning a particular method of play that isn't necessarily detrimental to the experience of another individual. Be it with shunning parsing (unless used exclusively as a tool to harass), or similarly with banning certain plugins or third-party tools that if anything adds to the QoL experience, and should realistically be natively supported. Granted, I don't think it would impact the facets of gameplay or guidance that they're thinking of. People writing guides are already adept enough that they can do such simply by reading the tooltips with adequate spreadsheet knowledge.

That being said, there needs to be a distinction between something that is inherently toxic to the game community, fostering one, and something that is objectively detrimental, and more in the black and white zone of cheating, e.g. botting, and PvP hacks. With the latter being something that shouldn't be condoned, and arguably many in the former falling into the realm of potentially being QoL.

[Kes13a]

Because it fractures a large portion of the player base, effectively in some shape or form shunning a particular method of play that isn't necessarily detrimental to the experience of another individual. Be it with shunning parsing (unless used exclusively as a tool to harass), or similarly with banning certain plugins or third-party tools that if anything adds to the QoL experience, and should realistically be natively supported. Granted, I don't think it would impact the facets of gameplay or guidance that they're thinking of. People writing guides are already adept enough that they can do such simply by reading the tooltips with adequate spreadsheet knowledge.

rather this not turn into another WoW where you end up spending more time updating QoL mods than you do updating the game.

they do need to hard ban the cheaters. but the 4 person team doing it, is not up to the task

[Ranaku]

rather this not turn into another WoW where you end up spending more time updating QoL mods than you do updating the game.

they do need to hard ban the cheaters. but the 4 person team doing it, is not up to the task

That's why i suggested to implement a gamemaster team for EVERY datacenter and let them be able to actually ban people. Cheaters have to get banned that is for sure. But it is a double edged sword when you do it with anti cheat. One that would burn all goodwill they have left and all the fun communities players build around the game. Housing, roleplay, gposing and even people who create guides cause they won't have access to data anymore. There would be not much left to thrive in this hostile environment and in the end that would affect everyone cause SE would lose money and that would affect of course the budget of the devs and content.

Edit: Also what the heck are you talking about, players develop the mods and stuff like plugins not the XIV devs. So idk where you connect the devs updating the game and independent players developing mods but yeah maybe think again. xD

[Kes13a]

Edit: Also what the heck are you talking about, players develop the mods and stuff like plugins not the XIV devs. So idk where you connect the devs updating the game and independent players developing mods but yeah maybe think again. xD

no, you misunderstood what I wrote.

I am aware that the devs do not make mods. however, every time there is a game update in WoW, you spend a lot of time going through mods "required" for QoL and updating to work with the new game update. I prefer FFxiv NOT become that. do you understand now?

[Ranaku]

no, you misunderstood what I wrote.

I am aware that the devs do not make mods. however, every time there is a game update in WoW, you spend a lot of time going through mods "required" for QoL and updating to work with the new game update. I prefer FFxiv NOT become that. do you understand now?

That is fair but so far the players update their mods to meet every update XIV brings out not the other way around. And yeah i understand that, i think the XIV devs becoming directly involved into the modding community would be not really productive. But i can tell you that this will never happen, they won't ever acknowledge mods cause it's illegal actually to mod software and hardware in japan AND of course there would be the problem of "which mods are ok and which are not". I wouldn't want to see the devs being involved in that either, there is already too much content being cut from the game and them struggling to keep up with the players expectations.

So no hard feelings i understand you now!

[Kaurhz]

rather this not turn into another WoW where you end up spending more time updating QoL mods than you do updating the game.

they do need to hard ban the cheaters. but the 4 person team doing it, is not up to the task

The problem is not that they need updating, it is that they don't really exist whatsoever outside of third-party or plugins, and this only becomes an issue when the design strategy of the game defaults to insinuating that all people use and access such things. One such example of this is I can simply look to many houses now and see items that have been placed on the Z coordinate when by default you can only place them on X and Y unless the said item is a tabletop. Some of these are even arguably being presented in the winners of the interior design community contests. Whether through third-party or glitching.

In the case of parsing, for a game that puts itself on the radar as being something around enrage checks and just general DPS checks -- Not having a feature that allows an individual to at least see their own, whether natively supported or otherwise is just counterintuitive to that design, really. It's all well and good performing well in a vacuum, but dealing with mechanics is not a vacuum. -- I do want to emphasise that I am not advocating for a plethora of mods to be incorporated into the game, but certain ones should and would be objectively advantageous to support inherently within the game.

There needs to be a level of reason here, really. So it depends entirely on your definition of 'cheating' more than anything. Just blanket banning people for third-party tools is a sure-fire way of pushing back against your community for no reason other than for the sake of it and will cause more issues than it aims to solve.

[Ranaku]

how do you know that having a game that comes down hard on cheaters wont bring even a larger group of people in? you dont. just like you cant say they would lose half their player base.

Sacrificing your players/communities for a gamble like that sounds like a REALLY bad idea. Might work, yeah i can't tell that. But the roleplay/raiding/gposing community would be lost. And these are also the communities, at least the roleplay and gposing, that leave most money in the mogstation.

And exactly that is the reason why i suggested a different approach than just murdering every goodwill you have with the community for a false sense of security. I know games who have anti cheat software running. And i played them. And i got anyways aimbotted and shot through walls and saw bots galore. There are other ways to come down hard on cheaters.