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

[Johners]

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.

The terms of service establishes that all third-party tools aren't to be used when playing the game. It's not about cheating, it's about quite literally everything, I don't see why the player base keeps trying to debate this. Changing a small UI element is just as much a violation as outright cheating. Bard bots, damage meters, Viera hats and whatever else is in the same boat. The massive grey area is from Square Enix's inability to equally detect and moderate third-party tool usage. You have to publicly show yourself as a streamer or via a social media in a way that's clearly identifiable for them to do anything.

There's plenty of established anti-cheat software that Square Enix could license for use within FFXIV, the question would be the moderation stance. Valorant, for example, has a fairly aggressive stance and the game will often refuse to start or disconnect you if it detects anything wrong which is the right thing for a competitive FPS title to do. World of Warcraft will simply flag your account and the suspicious activity for Blizzard to investigate and issue bans. When new cheats come along, Blizzard will typically hit in big ban waves while also making it visible to everyone else. I recall back in Warlords of Draenor when a ban wave for a paid cheat used by raiders was issued during peak raiding hours for European players. Many Mythic guilds save some of their best DPS players banned during boss pulls. Must be embarrassing having to explain that to your raid leader.

False detection on any established anti-cheat isn't going to be a thing. A bigger concern would be running some obscure anti-cheat we've never heard of or trying to develop their own technology for doing this. That said, anti-virus operating in the background or a mainstream voice chat application isn't going to throw a wobbly and get you banned if they were to implement something like Easy Anti Cheat.

[LianaThorne]

The terms of service establishes that all third-party tools aren't to be used when playing the game. It's not about cheating, it's about quite literally everything, I don't see why the player base keeps trying to debate this. Changing a small UI element is just as much a violation as outright cheating. Bard bots, damage meters, Viera hats and whatever else is in the same boat. The massive grey area is from Square Enix's inability to equally detect and moderate third-party tool usage. You have to publicly show yourself as a streamer or via a social media in a way that's clearly identifiable for them to do anything.

There's plenty of established anti-cheat software that Square Enix could license for use within FFXIV, the question would be the moderation stance. Valorant, for example, has a fairly aggressive stance and the game will often refuse to start or disconnect you if it detects anything wrong which is the right thing for a competitive FPS title to do. World of Warcraft will simply flag your account and the suspicious activity for Blizzard to investigate and issue bans. When new cheats come along, Blizzard will typically hit in big ban waves while also making it visible to everyone else. I recall back in Warlords of Draenor when a ban wave for a paid cheat used by raiders was issued during peak raiding hours for European players. Many Mythic guilds save some of their best DPS players banned during boss pulls. Must be embarrassing having to explain that to your raid leader.

False detection on any established anti-cheat isn't going to be a thing. A bigger concern would be running some obscure anti-cheat we've never heard of or trying to develop their own technology for doing this. That said, anti-virus operating in the background or a mainstream voice chat application isn't going to throw a wobbly and get you banned if they were to implement something like Easy Anti Cheat.

Let me ask you a real question:

What does it do to your day if someone uses a mod/plugin to give their Viera a hat (since the devs seem to be unable to) or play a song in one of the main cities? Does it really affect you that badly? If it does, please explain why. I'm genuinely curious.

[Caitlyn]

Its pretty simple. As long there is no ingame alternative, people prefer risking their account and computer using third party software.

For Example: SE dont want a parser. Easy. Add a result screen at the end of a raid, dungeon, etc. In Savage/Ex/Ultimate maybe between pulls. They did that in PvP already.

[Johners]

Let me ask you a real question:

What does it do to your day if someone uses a mod/plugin to give their Viera a hat (since the devs seem to be unable to) or play a song in one of the main cities? Does it really affect you that badly? If it does, please explain why. I'm genuinely curious.

Viera hats? Doesn't particularly bother me but for Square Enix, it does open an interesting thing to decide, what do you actually do? The same mechanisms that allow Viera hats also allow lewd modders to being their models, textures and even animations into the game (yes this is a thing now) which is something Square Enix have very much been vocally against. Not to mention that they also sell cosmetics in the optional cash store so for the men in suits, there's a business incentive to blocking third-party client-side cosmetic changes.

Bard bots are a similar thing. Aside from the usage of bard bots during Endwalker release to stay logged in which I know a few people that did so they didn't have to queue in the evening once they got home from work, it's just a little tired. Congratulations, you're the thousandth bard that's played Dragonsong using a third party program and it's even more obvious when an entire group of bards turn up with the same name. That said, you also have third-party programs that can play the entire MSQ and we've all see gibberish named sprouts playing the MSQ because it's been botted for years. SE can actually see when you're in performance mode anyway so this is really straightforward to moderate anyway and could still exist after this.

Unless they just implemented an anti-cheat in the nuclear way that auto moderated every detection, it would require Square Enix to make actual moderation policy decisions that they problem need to make at this stage. They're massively on the back foot of being able to manage all this additional functionality that's increasing in quality and quantity everyday. I can appreciate that quality of life changes people enjoy but even in this recent debate, everyone has a different idea of what QoL actually means and in the middle of all this is Square Enix being totally hopefully in moderating any of it regardless of how major or minor it actually is.

[LianaThorne]

Viera hats? Doesn't particularly bother me but for Square Enix, it does open an interesting thing to decide, what do you actually do? The same mechanisms that allow Viera hats also allow lewd modders to being their models, textures and even animations into the game (yes this is a thing now) which is something Square Enix have very much been vocally against. Not to mention that they also sell cosmetics in the optional cash store so for the men in suits, there's a business incentive to blocking third-party client-side cosmetic changes.

Bard bots are a similar thing. Aside from the usage of bard bots during Endwalker release to stay logged in which I know a few people that did so they didn't have to queue in the evening once they got home from work, it's just a little tired. Congratulations, you're the thousandth bard that's played Dragonsong using a third party program and it's even more obvious when an entire group of bards turn up with the same name. That said, you also have third-party programs that can play the entire MSQ and we've all see gibberish named sprouts playing the MSQ because it's been botted for years. SE can actually see when you're in performance mode anyway so this is really straightforward to moderate anyway and could still exist after this.

Unless they just implemented an anti-cheat in the nuclear way that auto moderated every detection, it would require Square Enix to make actual moderation policy decisions that they problem need to make at this stage. They're massively on the back foot of being able to manage all this additional functionality that's increasing in quality and quantity everyday. I can appreciate that quality of life changes people enjoy but even in this recent debate, everyone has a different idea of what QoL actually means and in the middle of all this is Square Enix being totally hopefully in moderating any of it regardless of how major or minor it actually is.

Bolded Point #1: Lewd models have been a thing for years. It's nothing new.
Bolded Point #2: This sounds like jealousy to me, but if it bothers you there's a little thing called muting Performance in your sound settings.
Bolded Point #3: This is false otherwise people would be getting banned as soon as they turn on any music related plugins or within a few days after using it. Clearly this is not the case as there are many individuals who have made in-game careers off of barding and continue to thrive.
Bolded Point #4: They have made a decision on it. They outright have stated that it's against the ToS, however they will not put anything on our PCs to detect what players are doing. This literally means: Hey we're going to say this is wrong but we can't stop you from using it unless you get yourself in hot water by using them publically.

Ultimately hun, your original post reads like you're upset that console players can't use mods or plugins and want them banned, even though if you were able to get a PC we both know you'd probably use them yourself. That's not the fault of the PC community that consoles are not able to mod (yes I am aware that Bethesda has done it in the past but they're a rare exception), nor is it on Square to level the playing field or pick sides and risk a riot by either side. Direct your anger where it matters, at the people who actually develop and produce consoles.

[Magikazam]

Viera hats? Doesn't particularly bother me but for Square Enix, it does open an interesting thing to decide, what do you actually do? The same mechanisms that allow Viera hats also allow lewd modders to being their models, textures and even animations into the game (yes this is a thing now) which is something Square Enix have very much been vocally against. Not to mention that they also sell cosmetics in the optional cash store so for the men in suits, there's a business incentive to blocking third-party client-side cosmetic changes.

Bard bots are a similar thing. Aside from the usage of bard bots during Endwalker release to stay logged in which I know a few people that did so they didn't have to queue in the evening once they got home from work, it's just a little tired. Congratulations, you're the thousandth bard that's played Dragonsong using a third party program and it's even more obvious when an entire group of bards turn up with the same name. That said, you also have third-party programs that can play the entire MSQ and we've all see gibberish named sprouts playing the MSQ because it's been botted for years. SE can actually see when you're in performance mode anyway so this is really straightforward to moderate anyway and could still exist after this.

Unless they just implemented an anti-cheat in the nuclear way that auto moderated every detection, it would require Square Enix to make actual moderation policy decisions that they problem need to make at this stage. They're massively on the back foot of being able to manage all this additional functionality that's increasing in quality and quantity everyday. I can appreciate that quality of life changes people enjoy but even in this recent debate, everyone has a different idea of what QoL actually means and in the middle of all this is Square Enix being totally hopefully in moderating any of it regardless of how major or minor it actually is.

So why does it matter that some people use nudes mods? No seriously, they can't force other people to see it so it only affect other people who willingly took said mods... SE are the first game dev I see that actively fight addons and it weird tbh

[SwingLifeAway]

Day 5 of Johners pretending he is a Square Enix employee.

[Adamantini]

The question here is not "how to punish", but "why do they use it?". I'm against plugins that measure damage, facilitate things like "what fish am I going to catch", or "press this button and do better", but there are other plugins that are things that SHOULD BE IN THE GAME.

Let me clarify better. After 10 years, they have just now implemented a system that indicates if you already have a song, mount, minion, or TT card. Do I need to say that there were plugins that did this before, and avoided having to need everything and see later that you already had the items?

Mods that fix things in the game, such as those that add hats to vieras and hrothgar, something that SE should have already done, since it failed to fulfill its promise of delivering exclusive hair and more customization options. Or mods that add ears to races, as SE has been using the methodology of amputating ears since the last expansion (see miqo'te)

Plugins that save your HUD so you can load it into another character. Something that should be basic in such an old game, and we still don't have it officially.

plugins that add chat bubbles, something I've been asking for since I started using the forum and that hasn't been implemented as an option until today.

These are just a few mods and plugins that have been commented on here on the forum recently. Things that don't harm anyone, and that should have been implemented by the company, but for reasons of ????, they still haven't.

It's no use console gamers wanting a witch hunt, and being content to force PC gamers to play the way they play. It would be much more productive to start screaming that they want changes to the game, so that no one else needs to use this type of program.