Third party tools are a game design failing in a multi-platform game

[Jaquan]

Except that there's no reason to do this because the vast majority of players are happy with knowing they can't use mods on console, and most of them probably don't even really know they exist. The ones that do for the most part don't care, because at worst it has no impact on them and at best it benefits them as well. You think console players in statics want half their static to get banned just for using ACT and fflogs? Get real. The demographic you see complaining are just people trying spite others for having things they can't. There is genuinely no other basis for it, citing Square Enix business model and a bunch of other nonsense is just a convenient vehicle used to validate their point and then be forgotten later when it suits them.

You're making arguments based on extreme situations with 0 knowledge or understanding, in order to create a negative impact on a relatively small demographic that you are not a part of, because you think you have some kind of moral superiority.

The reality is you're just actively going to make the game worse for that group of people, and arguably others, but you're trying to justify your hate crusade against them with this irrational nonsense. Even if the ToS doesn't change, mods will always be part of the game, people will parse, and if you're bad at the game people will know. Cope and seethe.

I thought the big "/S" was telling enough. Next time I'll go with "**SARCASTIC REMARK FROM NOW ON**" although it may not be enough.

In all seriousness though since the game is sold for the same price, with the same subscription costs to both Console Players and PC players and because we're not separated SE has a level of obligation to keep those experiences similar. This is why they can't and won't loosen up the ToS on add-ons. That's not to say they don't want any changes. Otherwise they wouldn't so openly declare their intent to look at UI mods to figure out which features community wants implemented.

[SieyaM]

I just hope a lot of the things they want to add are toggle on/off and not always on. Most of these things are not needed for the majority of content and would be a lot of UI clutter.

[Welsper59]

This topic is very disingenuous just based on the notion of looking at it like a "failure". Mods are used and created for personal preference. So unless any video game will allow you to do anything with it, literally anything, mods will always be a thing. Don't like the way a spell looks? Mod it. Don't like the fact graphics may look a little more realistic and prefer a cartoon look to it? Mod it. Want Macho Man to fly around yelling signature quotes? Mod it.

That's not to say that improvements shouldn't happen, but the argument being made by OP is that the very presence of 3rd party tools is a failure of the game. That's just simply not true.

[SwingLifeAway]

"You won't know you make mistakes and how to fix them without ACT"
If you are solely using the tools the game provides you, and not reading any job guides, then this is just true. But it still doesn't make it mandatory, people can make plenty of mistakes and still clear content. My static is very midcore, I make plenty mistakes, as does everyone else in my group. We're almost done with the tier. Again, as long as you find a group that has the same expectations, nobody is going to expect you to have any addon.

In addition the the above, savage and even ultimate fights can be cleared via the Party Finder in game. Nobody in any PF group has ever asked me if I have mods, or any such thing relating to them. And I have played REALLY badly in some groups, causing wipes in several instances and doing really bad damage. The only person who ever criticized me for those poor performances, was myself, as it should be. So in the end, I hope this clears up some of the misconceptions and allays some of your concerns you might have surrounding the topic, and explains why some of us feel the way we do, and think that people such as Johners are being particularly spiteful. I know that the culture in WoW regarding addons is atrocious - I've been through GearScore, Raider.io, DBM and I genuinely hated it all, but that doesn't mean that XIV cannot be any different. We just have to ensure that toxic behavior using the addons is not allowed, but that doesn't mean the addons themselves are to blame. Chances are someone who would flame you for low DPS will just find any other reason to flame you anyway. They can catch a ban.

(2/2)

[Ralphe2449]

"You won't know you make mistakes and how to fix them without ACT"

If people read their own skills and passives then the "optimal" path is blatantly clear, when I do a mistake it is clear and obvious, I dont need a dps meter to tell me otherwise because the vast majority of mmorpgs have rotations that are very clear and obvious IF you take time to read your own skills and passives.

If you choose to not do that you have nobody else to blame but yourself

[SwingLifeAway]

If people read their own skills and passives then the "optimal" path is blatantly clear, when I do a mistake it is clear and obvious, I dont need a dps meter to tell me otherwise because the vast majority of mmorpgs have rotations that are very clear and obvious IF you take time to read your own skills and passives.

If you choose to not do that you have nobody else to blame but yourself

I question your ability to read your own skills if you cannot even read the entirety of what I said and take it into context.

Yes, you can learn basic rotation from the game, but an optimized rotation you cannot learn from the tools the game gives you. The game also doesn't give you any feedback on areas where you may have made mistakes while focusing on mechanics, which in turn means that you do not know what you need to work on to improve.

You can clear content without it, and you can perform well without it, but in groups that are pushing for week 1 clears, where even 100-200 dps can matter then it is very important to be optimizing your rotation. This is exactly why the addon wouldn't be mandatory, because the vast majority of statics in the small raiding community don't go for week 1 clears.

If you do hard content with no addons and only using what the game gives you, then good for you. I really don't care. Neither should you care about people playing the game the way they want to play it, provided they are not cheating. Parsing is not cheating.

Are you on alt account? Or do you usually try and project your uninformed opinions onto how other people should be able to enjoy their hobbies in other communities as well?

[Ralphe2449]

Yes, you can learn basic rotation from the game, but an optimized rotation you cannot learn from the tools the game gives you. The game also doesn't give you any feedback on areas where you may have made mistakes while focusing on mechanics, which in turn means that you do not know what you need to work on to improve.

Unless there's hidden interactions the optimized rotations is more often than not obvious.

Now if you are referring on tailoring said rotation to the encounter's mechanic that is also quite clear, when you waste a combo or a cd offensive or mobility due to a mechanic the mistake is blatant and now you know what you should do next time. Unless you want to argue people dont pay attention to their buffs/dots and just brainlessly spam 1,2,3 irrespective of how many times the mechanic screws theirrotation. Maximizing uptime is also quite obvious, when you fail to do that you know that next time you need to do something different to maximize it.

You dont need the game to tell you "Hey, maybe if you hadnt wasted your cd early and lost seconds of it you would have maximized its efficiency" (obviously depending on encounter duration)

[SwingLifeAway]

Unless there's hidden interactions the optimized rotations is more often than not obvious.

Ah, so you really actually have no idea what you're talking about. Thanks for letting me know.

[IdowhatIwant]

If people read their own skills and passives then the "optimal" path is blatantly clear, when I do a mistake it is clear and obvious, I dont need a dps meter to tell me otherwise because the vast majority of mmorpgs have rotations that are very clear and obvious IF you take time to read your own skills and passives.

If you choose to not do that you have nobody else to blame but yourself

A lot of the in game tooltips are poorly written. There has been improvement over the years, but for example when I read all the reaper skills before trying it out, it sounded way more complicated than is actually plays.

[Colt47]

I'll drop the hot take at the start but third party tools are a failing in a multi-platform game and lack of any proper anti-cheat mechanisms on PC lets the entire player base down, especially PlayStation users.

This parts seems to be forgotten or just willingly ignored in the entire third party tools discussion. Square Enix are developing and publishing a multi-platform game that's also cross-platform and they're failing an entire group of them by not properly enforcing the existing terms of service.

Before people do the "console OMEGALUL" thing that I've seen a lot around the plug-in discussion, they're a massive part of the player base and in Japan there simply isn't the PC gaming that's in Western markets. There's a duty on Square Enix to design a game that's fair and equal for the entire player base regardless of how they choose to play. This extends to the toolset available to players via the default UI and ensuring both input methods (controller and KB+M) are both balanced.

I appreciate some of quality of life user interface mods but at the same time, some of these are a product of people playing other MMOs and wanting that same experience in FFXIV. A notable example with streamers was Limit Max getting an exact replica of his WoW UI in this game but that also extends to plugins to replicate mouseover macro functionality that WoW has which I personally know many people that use.

Square Enix seemingly don't like to truly confront the player base in a way they'd take negatively and up until now, every discussion on third party tools has mostly been rewording the terms of service and asking people not to use it. Unfortunately the game is too popular for the "don't do it stance" statement to actually work anymore and the solution is proper moderation from SE, not self-moderation from the community.

At least they finally addressed the implications of console support in the most recent letter regarding third party tools but until they're actually willing to implement the client-side anti-cheat they'd need to enforce this, absolutely nothing changes. They're between a rock and a hard place. On one side it's ever improving plugins with more visibility than ever. On the other side it's implementing an anti-cheat for the PC users so they can actually solve the problem.

Anti-Cheat is to prevent malicious behavior in a game conducted by people that harms other players in the game. Modding itself does not constitute cheating and implementing anti-cheat simply to fight mods is a mistake. The terms of service are very clear what is and is not allowed and the only gray area has been the enforcement and punishment of violations.

If the company were to institute technology to detect the usage of third party software as described in the ToS, it would be a huge maintenance issue and liability for SE that provides no financial benefit to the company and if you believe this is false, imagine an anti-virus scan triggering your banning from FFXIV because it opens and scans the files for FFXIV, or getting banned for an overlay that is always active by default from some common communication software such as Discord or webex.