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

[Johners]

Asmongold interviews a plugin developer on his stream yesterday and has since uploaded that section of the stream to YouTube. The developer was full of some incredibly bad takes and even the title of the video was a misrepresentation of the situation (although some of that is down to playing the YouTube algorithm) You can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVqCl7o-ANY

1. The title says "His Addons Are ILLEGAL Now" but they were already against the terms of service, nothing has changed here. This will ultimately misinform some players who don't know as much about the situation.
2. The developer seems to imply the WoW exodus was a problem but that's a little dishonest. The plugin problem was already there, it was just easier to hide in a smaller player base and not the fault of the WoW boogeyman.
3. The dev implies the game is starting to get too hard to clear without some of these plugins meanwhile there's an entire player base that clears, on all platforms, without any plugins at all.
4. The dev also implies that Square Enix are lying when they say the savage/ultimate content is cleared internally during testing before it's released. That's a spicy take considering Yoshi-P himself plays and clears content plus I'd imagine the wider dev team is also doing this if they've constantly been releasing this content without any public test realms like World of Warcraft.
5. Points a finger at plugin users who use cosmetic mods or the tools that make housing glitches easier to execute but dislike combat mods such as ACT or Cactbot. Pretty unnecessary to mention when all these tools break the terms of service equally.
6. Compares developing mods for FFXIV to developing mods for games like Minecraft and Terraria while also stating it's a strength of PC gaming. Probably the dumbest take of this interview as FF14 is not like Minecraft or Terraria and it's not a PC-only game either. The consequences of modding is completely different in a cross-platform, always online game than it is for people modding Minecraft on their own servers they have to host themselves.

The last time Asmongold interviewed a plugin developer, albeit that time it was for lewd content, it only ended up making that portion of the community look bad. Imagine putting a plugin developer on one of the biggest streams in the world and having them play victim the entire time despite openly breaking the terms of service.

[Kazimere]

Because the "console omegalul" crowd just doesn't understand the game design of cross-platform games and how it impacts the choices Square Enix are making for everyone. They actually have a duty to ensure it's fair and even for all users on all supported platforms. An Xbox version that's been rumoured since like 2018 may still happen so that's just another piece of the design puzzle as well.

They don’t have a “duty” to do anything. If you
play on console, you don’t have access to certain tools/ QoL plugins. That’s just life. Get over it, or go buy a PC.

[SwingLifeAway]

Imagine putting a plugin developer on one of the biggest streams in the world and having them play victim the entire time despite openly breaking the terms of service.

Imagine making a thread on the forums to crab around and whine about how Square should negatively impact the game experience of people who do content you've never even touched.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

A few responses:

1) Agreed.

2) I think trying to tie this situation to WoW is the wrong take. IMHO it's much more like the Windower situation that FFXI faced where the QoL improvements on offer were just impossible to ignore and it only ever improved whereas the official client just sat around being stagnant and stuck in the past. Windower certainly had plenty of shady things of it's own on offer, but it's core functionality was a revelation. It ballooned into what it eventually became because SE tried to ignore what it bought to the table.

3) Eeehhhhh, this is a point with no correct answer that everyone will be happy with. Would console players be playing at the same level without strats and optimisations derived from data harvested in the PC client? Would console players be able to go into an Ultimate blind and clear it without external tools such as fftoolbox, existing guides, YouTube videos, externally captured video for analysis etc? I highly doubt it would happen in any kind of sensible timeframe.

4) He's not wrong but Yoshida's not outright lying either, as ever the real story is somewhere in the middle. Gordias forced Yoshida to give some insight on their internal processes, what went wrong with that tier in particular (Testing phase by phase with cooldowns being reset basically) and what they planned to change to fix it (Test fights in their entirety, rather than phase by phase). In short, I don't think Yoshida is outright lying claiming that it's cleared internally, but as an ex Bullfrog/EA developer, I know exactly how QA works at these sorts of large studios and they are absolutely not getting QA teams that are capable of clearing something like DSR in the manner that a top fight raid team does. They will work their way through it to make sure things work sure, but they won't be doing it in the same manner as we do, they'll have various degrees of inflated ilvl or outright godmode to do so.

5) I mean he's not wrong. These mods really should be part of the discussion to emphasise how important it is that SE makes the right judgement call at the end of all of this. Actively pursuing all of these mods and such by the way of anti cheat and/or file checks would be devastating to all areas of this games community.

6) FF14 isn't like Minecraft or Terraria because the developers don't have the initiative to allow their own player base to help improve their own game for them. I don't think it's a dumb take at all. Sure there's stuff that crosses the line and takes things way too far, but completely ignoring the good because of the bad is self defeating.

[LeonKeyh]

They don’t have a “duty” to do anything. If you
play on console, you don’t have access to certain tools/ QoL plugins. That’s just life. Get over it, or go buy a PC.

Except... they DO. If they're advertising the game on multiple platforms for the same price then they need to ensure that the experience is as similar as possible. That means making it against the rules for certain mods/plugins. It's never going to be even but that's not an excuse to allow the console experience to degrade into unplayability. It forces them to do what they said they were going to do, the tools/QoL plugins that are deemed "necessary" are being integrated to keep the gap between console and PC experience small.

Why else do you think they have such a blanket statement about third party tools? It's not because they care about people increasing the font of their ability cooldown timer. It's because console doesn't have access to that and they need to keep the experience as equal as possible.

[SwingLifeAway]

Except... they DO. If they're advertising the game on multiple platforms for the same price then they need to ensure that the experience is as similar as possible.

Yes, for the product that THEY deliver. That doesn't mean they have to automatically blacklist useful third party tools and plugins, delivered by someone else. That is what makes them third party, i.e not what you are paying for when you buy the game

[Johners]

Yes, for the product that THEY deliver. That doesn't mean they have to automatically blacklist useful third party tools and plugins, delivered by someone else. That is what makes them third party, i.e not what you are paying for when you buy the game

Except Square Enix already have a policy against the use of third party tools, they just don't enforce it on a large scale. SE either need to start enforcing it correctly or alter the terms of service to something they're actually willing to enforce. This entire situation is SE's fault by never actually enforcing the strict no third party tools policy in ToS we all accepted when signing up to play FFXIV.

[Kazimere]

Except... they DO. If they're advertising the game on multiple platforms for the same price then they need to ensure that the experience is as similar as possible. That means making it against the rules for certain mods/plugins. It's never going to be even but that's not an excuse to allow the console experience to degrade into unplayability. It forces them to do what they said they were going to do, the tools/QoL plugins that are deemed "necessary" are being integrated to keep the gap between console and PC experience small.

Why else do you think they have such a blanket statement about third party tools? It's not because they care about people increasing the font of their ability cooldown timer. It's because console doesn't have access to that and they need to keep the experience as equal as possible.

Bitching about something as minuscule as font size as a justification to not have add-ones is just pathetic. How does something like that give a PC player an advantage? Maybe just ask for it to be integrated into the stock game without crying that PC players should be banned? You people cut off your noses to spite your faces ALL THE TIME.

[Kazimere]

Except Square Enix already have a policy against the use of third party tools, they just don't enforce it on a large scale. SE either need to start enforcing it correctly or alter the terms of service to something they're actually willing to enforce. This entire situation is SE's fault by never actually enforcing the strict no third party tools policy in ToS we all accepted when signing up to play FFXIV.

No, SE just needs to grab its sack and publicly allow add-ons instead of catering to these whiny people.

[Johners]

No, SE just needs to grab its sack and publicly allow add-ons instead of catering to these whiny people.

You realise that allowing plugins would mean Square Enix changing their terms of service to remove the flat ban on all third party tools, right?