Console Players don't need Addons

[QooEr]

To define what we could potentially call cheating or for a less grievous term, artificially lowering content difficulty. One of the simplest ways to define it would be anything that does something for you instead of doing it yourself. There's no ambiguity nor doubt about it I believe?

there IS some ambiguity. what separates qol from actual difficulty? if someone has a tiny monitor and uses a zoomhack to see things that they'd otherwise be able to see with a bigger resolution, is that "artificially lowering difficulty"? is buying a new monitor also "artificially lowering difficulty"?

if someone has 200ms ping and is constantly clipping their gcd because the game increases animation lock depending on ping, and uses a plugin to make them have the same animation lock as if they lived in sacramento, is that also "artificially lowering difficulty"? is moving to california that too then?

i could keep going.

Parsers, ACT, whatever DPS meter you like to use. A tool that serves to analyse someone's efficiency. In my humble opinion, I believe you don't actually need any of that to just clear.

you would be correct. in fact, its just a meter. if anything act is the least controversial of all the plugins, because all it does is... measure dps. its the least gameplay intrusive one, it does not lower difficulty at all. and yet its the one that seems to garner the most hate for some reason. of course if you add triggers and other plugins thats a different story, but DPS meters on their own are the most innocuous ones. the harassment pseudo-argument is a different point and theres already rules against harassment so its honestly a non-sequitur.

As far as I see it, some people are trading the fun in playing the game for over-efficiently clear content. Not saying there isn't any fun at all in being good but when you get a random thing telling you how to play...I don't know, to me it feels cheap, weak, bland, empty.

to each their own. to me, just barely clearing and doing mediocre damage feels just as cheap, weak, bland and empty. and i dont need any parser nor xivanalysis for me to notice areas to improve, thats just a thing i like to do. its like trying to lecture people that like making better builds for their characters in rpgs. why bother? well sometimes pushing your limits is fun. its as simple as that.

Can we please talk about these points I made? About the whole trivialising content or not?

what is trivializing content? i had a similar discussion with someone else 1 2. The plugins the vast majority people use, want or defend are not some piloting nonsense. theyre just QoL to make the game less clunky.