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

[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)

[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.

[Magikazam]

WoW had addon since back in vanilla yet they can still ban cheaters and let the vast majority of the player base play with third-party tools. Don't pretend FXIV doesn't have the tools to do the same in 2022.

[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.

[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.

[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.