My Proposal on Recent Drama

[SwingLifeAway]

Honestly think this is part of the root of the current issues. All the times SE has given the "don't use 3rd party tools" they told us that they can't monitor user-side. But some streamers decided to both show and tell their 3rd party tools live to thousands of people online. Both having the cake and eating it too.

Irrelevant argument. Just because streamers have done this does not make the ToS & the enforcement thereof immune to criticism. You do not need to defend the ToS, it is not your child.

[Banggugyangu]

Mod users fall under 3 categories:

1: People who want to cheat for whatever reason. (Their reason isn't important.) Cheating is wrong. Anything that makes the content in the game easier to complete than was intended is a form of cheating. Before someone comes in and talks about over-gearing for content, that is intended. Despite that, SE gave tools to take on the content at the minimum level required to enter the content. Over-gearing isn't cheating. Tools that inform you of AoEs before the game does count as cheating. Tools that automate things count as cheating. There are other examples as well, I know the PvP cheaters have been a hot topic lately with the popularity of CC. These are black and white, right vs wrong. Don't cheat in multiplayer games. Period.

2: People who feel that there are aspects of the game that are lacking in functionality. This is a very broad range of people. This could be something as simple as "The game doesn't have chat bubbles for player text, but it does for NPC text. It would be cool if we could have chat bubbles for everything." to as complex as "The UI will show buff and debuff timers when I target a player, so it tells me that information already, but the party list doesn't display it. It's detrimental to have to target people individually to see this information, so let's put it on the party list." This category is the definition of a gray area. There are things that some people feel are lacking which would reduce the difficulty to clear content. These things are typically things that provide information that doesn't already exist in the game in some form or another. I don't want those in the game, personally. I feel that this then creates a situation where the devs will have to adjust their design philosophy to accommodate their existence, and that's a situation I want to avoid. Other things, like the 2 direct examples I gave in this section, are things that either provide personalization options or provide a better means of displaying information that is already present and provided to the player. Those are tweaks that don't affect the design philosophy in any way, and simply improve the quality of life for the players.

Second half in next post due to length...

[Banggugyangu]

2a: A subset of group 2 is the player that, due to disability, needs assistance to be able to perceive the information given. The most obvious is people who suffer from colorblindness, but there are others. This is an accessibility problem. Mr. Happy spoke out yesterday about this, as he is one of those people. His point is valid. The existing options are deficient. Accessibility options need a second pass and improvement. I'm not personally one of this subset, but I have perused the options available, and it feels inadequate to my ignorant perception. I don't know what SE's approach was when designing the accessibility options was, but using the colorblind correction tools as an example of what I would suggest: I would hope they bring in someone with each type of colorblindness, present them with P2, P3, and Endsinger Extreme, and work with them until they create filters that do the best job possible for each type of colorblindness. (I use P2 and P3 as they have 2 very polarizing aesthetics, and ESEX has a side-issue that may or may not af) Alongside this, the raid design team needs to learn from P3. When designing a raid, having an orange boss with orange adds, orange AoE markers, an orange skybox, and an orange platform may be something that one should take a second look at.

Oof... so long it has to be 3 posts....

[Banggugyangu]

3: People who want to create graphical assets to use on their own client. These are your model creators, UI texture designers. This falls under "User generated content". This is stuff that is totally benign. It doesn't change anything about gameplay whatsoever. It is an aesthetic change and nothing more. Whether you share their passion or not, user generated content becomes the life-blood of a game for MANY people. Look at Counter Strike and the hugely popular and successful store. This was the purpose of the workshop suggestion. I don't personally want a "store" where people sell their models/textures, but I would love for a "workshop" where they can share them. Once SE vets the submissions to confirm that they don't exploit anything to affect gameplay, the workshop then provides a manner of downloading and replacing your desired texture on ONLY your client. I stress this point for 2 reasons: 1, some people want the SE assets only, and that's OK. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play the game exactly how SE implements it. Just because you want your moogle staff to have bruises and blood all over the moogle on top doesn't mean I want it to. The 2nd reason opens the door for those who wish to use the adult assets for their own pleasure. While I don't understand this part, myself, I know that it's a big part of the game for many players. Obviously this should be behind some enforceable age-gate, but giving the option for players to use them that desire to when they are following the other parts of the ToS that apply to gameplay regarding the accompanying activities just prevents alienating them. TLR this section: I'm not suggesting a store. I'm not suggesting SE officially implement these user generated assets. I'm simply suggesting a sanctioned workshop that is moderated by SE for this type of user generated content. That puts these types of mods into a new category of "Don't want? Don't Use." where everyone can be happy.