Proposal: A Solution to Third Party Tool Problem

[Larirawiel]

This still relies on Square Enix taking a stance on what tools are acceptable and those that aren't. At the end of the day, the vast majority of third party tools in the entire toolset are never going to be deemed acceptable so an official plugin framework would still results in a lot of lost functionality for many users.

Yes and no. Some functionality like parsers would not work anymore. But otoh you could have new functionality, which is not in the current mods.

Not to mention that a lot of the problem also relies on the fact Square Enix seemingly have very few if any client-side mechanisms to detect or prevent the use of these tools. An official plugin framework doesn't really solve the wider problem in this discussion as the existing tools would continue to work.

There are some non-intrusive methods to prevent the usage of modifications. They could start to encrypt parts of the client or use methods like ASLR. This would make it way harder to create reliable interface mods. But atm they do nothing.


Cheers