My Proposal on Recent Drama

[Banggugyangu]

The recent drama surrounding 3rd party tools has been a raging forest fire the past few days, as everyone knows. This thread is not about discussion of whether or not said 3rd party tools are good or bad. There are enough of those. Rather, I'm creating this thread in order to put forth my proposal for what I feel would be the best approach in solving the problem as best as possible.

My proposed solution would be 3-fold:
1st: For an internal team to determine which of the 3rd party tools add beneficial functionality to enhance the game, then implement those into the core game. Yoshi-P has already stated that they have plans to take this approach, so part 1 covered, I suppose.

2nd: Create a "workshop" of sorts for aesthetic modifications that then become sanctioned. These aesthetic modifications could function exactly the same as they do currently: Client-side only. Anyone that claims that model swaps, UI retexturing, etc.. is detrimental to the game, IMO, is simply incorrect. When these types of modifications are client-side only, whether someone has them or not really affects no one outside of those who use them. On the other hand, for some players, these types of mods become the life-blood of the game. Having a sanctioned workshop for such mods allows for these types of mods to exist, but before being usable they are vetted to ensure that they don't allow for any type of game-breaking behavior.

3: Officially sanction GShade/ReShade or implement a filtering engine into the game.

I love the game. I don't need any modifications. I do feel that there are certain aspects that are lacking in functionality or usability. It will inevitably and understandably take a while for SE to implement these functionalities. Unfortunately, I don't see this drama going away in the near future. I'm just hoping that the fires start to burn out soon, and the community can return to normal.

[EagleDynamics]

1st: For an internal team to determine which of the 3rd party tools add beneficial functionality to enhance the game, then implement those into the core game. Yoshi-P has already stated that they have plans to take this approach, so part 1 covered, I suppose.

good. its about time square does something like this. cd and buff timers arent cheats for crying out loud.

[HolyReign]

Square Enix doesn't need to amend any list, determine what is/isn't allowed, create additional tools to add any more bedazzling to your character, ect.

ToS is pretty simple to understand, don't use outside programs, addons or tools.

SE has made it's stance pretty clear, with the recent bans of people who blatantly use these things, during streaming, or video creation, that the use is against ToS.

FFXIV, is a beautiful game, it's content has been watered down so much that any content is done without too much effort, yet people keep going on and on about wanting them.

[EagleDynamics]

Square Enix doesn't need to amend any list, determine what is/isn't allowed, create additional tools to add any more bedazzling to your character, ect.

well i guess you better start arguing with yoshi p then because it seems thats the path they intend to take.

[IdowhatIwant]

FFXIV, is a beautiful game, it's content has been watered down so much that any content is done without too much effort, yet people keep going on and on about wanting them.

I think that is more a problem with the content, and not people using a parser or a buff tracker.

[Amenara]

ToS is pretty simple to understand, don't use outside programs, addons or tools.

Gonna respectfully disagree on that point, especially when Yoshida himself was referring to things like calculators, excel spreadsheets, and an MMO mouse as able to be interpreted as a 3rd party tool. Even if it was meant to be a little hyperbolic it still shows how far you can take the whole idea of what a 3rd party tool is.

[Jagick]

Square Enix doesn't need to amend any list, determine what is/isn't allowed, create additional tools to add any more bedazzling to your character, ect.

ToS is pretty simple to understand, don't use outside programs, addons or tools.

SE has made it's stance pretty clear, with the recent bans of people who blatantly use these things, during streaming, or video creation, that the use is against ToS.

FFXIV, is a beautiful game, it's content has been watered down so much that any content is done without too much effort, yet people keep going on and on about wanting them.

While I agree that 3rd party tools that give in game advantages during competitive content or serves to ostracize certain players from content are sketchy , there are some simple QoL things that some of the addons I've read about do that should have been in the game years ago, such as moving furniture freely along the Z-axis when decorating, saving and exporting chat logs, or combining your main 1-2-3 class combo into a single button (which is something PvP already does.)

YoshiP was exactly right when he admitted FFXIV and SE has been failing the player base in this regard, it's a service issue that they need to improve on at some point rather than making the spaghetti code excuse.

[Jaquan]

It's unlikely that DSR would exist today in its current form had ACT never existed, but that doesn't mean the content requires addons. It's possible to benefit from the culture / knowledge that exists because of addons without directly using them yourself. Simply put, the game never would have been pushed to the extremes that it has if people couldn't measure and analyze stuff.

I do and and always will disagree with that. Been around numerous communities in more and less competitive game and I think attributing the fact we have any advanced knowledge to ACT is disingenuous at best and insulting ar worst. Every game, every community will eventually have people dedicated enough to work out things like damage mechanic, stat correlation. I've seen it in games that are much less open about their data compared to FFXIV. Hell the ACT exists because someone was able to access the data and make a tool that shows it in more digestible manner.
Did the tool speed up the progress. Yeah. Would the progress never be made without it? I don't think so.

[Rolder50]

1st: For an internal team to determine which of the 3rd party tools add beneficial functionality to enhance the game, then implement those into the core game. Yoshi-P has already stated that they have plans to take this approach, so part 1 covered, I suppose.

The real question here is how far are they going to go? I'm betting we get like one or two things and it'll take five patches to get there.

[Johners]

1st: For an internal team to determine which of the 3rd party tools add beneficial functionality to enhance the game, then implement those into the core game. Yoshi-P has already stated that they have plans to take this approach, so part 1 covered, I suppose.

Per the terms of service, they've already done this with the list being completely empty. They've said they'd review plugins for QoL UI changes as part of their endeavour to improve the user interface for all users. It's not really a commit to add anything specific or do it by any particular patch.

2nd: Create a "workshop" of sorts for aesthetic modifications that then become sanctioned. These aesthetic modifications could function exactly the same as they do currently: Client-side only. Anyone that claims that model swaps, UI retexturing, etc.. is detrimental to the game, IMO, is simply incorrect. When these types of modifications are client-side only, whether someone has them or not really affects no one outside of those who use them. On the other hand, for some players, these types of mods become the life-blood of the game. Having a sanctioned workshop for such mods allows for these types of mods to exist, but before being usable they are vetted to ensure that they don't allow for any type of game-breaking behavior.

Yeah, never happening, why would they give you cosmetic plugins for free when they can sell cosmetics items in the cash store instead? Approved or not, it's just a better business model to sell it as a cash money item.

3: Officially sanction GShade/ReShade or implement a filtering engine into the game.

Bright 4 colour filter preset from gpose as my default for the entire game would be nice to have via the options menu. This is a feature they could easily implement alongside better colourblind accessibility functions.