All addons are not equal

[Shougun]

The DBM (WoW addon that told you what the boss is or was going to do) is baked in the parse utility (though as far as I know you have to turn it on within the utility), so if SE decided to do what they said they wouldn't do and spy into people's PCs. Then I imagine the other powerful tool out there would get DBM (as complex fights makes such a tool likely highly desirable by some players), and so you'd also be detecting for the custom launcher lol. Not saying you can't do that but just that the tool(s) that can or do what you described would both need to be burnt in order for that third clause to happen.

DBM tool that is active has been around for a long while, and before it there was inbuilt scripts people could make for it that did functionally similar things if you cared enough (I'm wondering if it wont be such now, but before all of this was really easy to learn by looking at reddit just occasionally).

I'm really curious how much impact it would have, given that FFXIV seems to have a little bit more casual audience, and that casual audience is already the majority group in most games (even WoW with vaguely similar 1 - 10% like numbers, depending on what content you're looking at). Potentially if you went scorched earth you might see a direct participation impact to those harder contents.

Would be funny that to save the hard content you end up making it even less attractive which leads to the numbers showing it's even less player engaged leading to SE putting less importance on making them lol. (Conversely said the increase in player awareness and reduced stress and thus increased participation given DBM like tools is why SE has recently felt skill increases, so taking action against them might lead to them seeing the original if not worse numbers since the DBM like tool in FFXIV is fairly old though both tools have increased in attention a lot in recent time)

SE can do whatever they want but I'm still of the mind, from basically a decade ago on the forums, that you cant stop the addons- and if you force them to exist in the dark you're going to lack control over them. Making the game good enough that most addons are pointless is an interesting solution and I hope that is successful though, and even if it's not everyone is still a winner because the game offers more power. (I imagine such an attempt may decrease reliance on it at least).

Not even saying the tool may not be having a negative impact to the game like DBM as I do believe it increases awareness in a very effective way and as such SE might be thinking "wow our players are getting better, we need to up the ante"- but I feel given how SE approaches design the issue is not as pronounced as they have created a quality control technique in that they test the content themselves, and also ensure certain player skill levels can do certain content (like when Yoshida had to remove someone from the test team because they got too good lol), which helps dampen the damage such a tool could do. Since the team plays the game without tools (I hope at least lol), it allows them to ensure they're not asking more than is reasonable from a non-tool player.

From what I know, at least hearing about certain infamous bosses, in WoW they didn't always ensure they could complete the content because they assumed their players were better (and in essence did allow DBM to have a greater runaway effect, making it an essential tool unless you had exceptional memory and response time.. or doing easy content ).