Console Players don't need Addons

[Gemina]

youre being intellecutally dishonest. addons go from things as harmless as "change the bgm" to actual cheating and automation. use some critical thinking for once and stop clumping them together and pretending people are all pining for the cheating ones.

Remember the first words here. I am going to bring them back around. It is quite ironic, and even a bit humorous that you are telling me to use critical thinking and stop lumping everyone together, when I have yet to accuse anyone of cheating. I, like several other posters have asked why users of third party tools and addons need them. From what I can tell, these are coming from mostly console users who do not have access to these tools. Furthermore it also isn't this group of people who are stating that these tools put them at a disadvantage. How could we possibly know? We are deliberately told that we are placed at a disadvantage, and guess who says this? It's the third party tool users.

So with what you said to me earlier. Who exactly is being intellectually dishonest? It sure in hell isn't me.

theres plugins that do help and make things "easier" but not by a substantial margin. theres one addon out there that makes battle countdowns show for every second instead of just the last 5. it makes it "easier" in that someone doesnt have to count in their heads to use sharpcast or whatever at -12 seconds, but do you seriously think theyre unable to do that themselves? moreover do you seriously think that being able to use sharpcast at exactly -12 is going to make someone suddenly able to clear savages and ultimates with no practice? youre just arguing in bad faith at that point.

I agree, that would be arguing in bad faith; if any of this was my argument. You might want to reread this. You quite literally just told me that addons make things easier, how they do so, and then proceed to state that I'm claiming players are clearing savage and ultimate without practice. Not much else to say about that.

[QooEr]

I agree, that would be arguing in bad faith; if any of this was my argument. You might want to reread this. You quite literally just told me that addons make things easier, how they do so, and then proceed to state that I'm claiming players are clearing savage and ultimate without practice. Not much else to say about that.

ok then, i apologize. yes those things make things easier. but then we're talking about a different kind of difficulty here. what differentiates QoL from gameplay difficulty?

if you analyze the sliding scale of difficulty in ffxiv encounters, youll find out what entails the intended difficulty vs just fighting bad design choices. you start having to memorize boss attack patterns, pay attention to cast bars, needing to execute rotations properly to meet dps checks, failing mechanics becomes more punishing (vuln up -> oneshot -> insta wipe), etc. there are many things that become harder as a design choice. however none of those are even remotely related to the woes that people who use these addons want to address (except i guess maybe the CD tracking one?? which again, people still can do using vanilla xiv with an excel spreadsheet. is it hypocritical to use excel to plan mitigation too?)

the game doesnt really ask you to pay attention to other people's buff timers. the game is already giving you a battle log that tells you pretty much why you die. the game already has a countdown and someone can make a macro that sends every second in chat. someone who wants a bigger challenge from the game, and thus doing ultimate content, can still without any contradiction on their part want to just not fight the game's ui, because the difficulty of encounters in ffxiv revolves around pattern recognition and execution of mechanics + rotations, not around looking at buffs or counting seconds mentally during a pre-pull countdown. theres nothing ironic in the slightest.