Yoshi-P "definitive" answer on third party tools from today's 14 hour stream

[Johners]

Translation of a question and answer from today's 14 hour stream. This is copy-pasted verbatim from Iluna Minori's thread in the Final Fantasy XIV (r/FFXIV) Discord server. Reportedly Yoshi-P was very rambly and uncomfortable while answer this question as well.

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Q3: During the previous PLL you mentioned that if we are just playing it normally this shouldn't be concerning us and we have been playing things normally but I do see terms like third party tools that are against the rules and regulations being listed as required in Lodestone or mentioned in forums, and I personally dislike talking about third party tools so to have to mention to these players about how using third party tools during recruitment and whatnot are being forbidden really makes me sad sometimes, so if you have plans on trying to provide warning to those who continue using third party tools, or any plans that deal with those who use third party tools, I would like to know.

YoshiP: We have no plans in trying to delve into this issue any further. I am aware of how impactful my words are when it comes to this issue, so if I were to keep on providing explanation further about this issue like saying using such and such in particular is against the ToS it will cause a terrifying amount of mass reports and it becomes a issue of what's the point of even playing the game.....so yeah. And if you are to ask me if I would go my way to crack down on third party sites that upload everyone's data (it's obvious that he mentions FFLOGS in this case), and this..well I am aware of how much of the nuisance that site caused, having to see the numbers we don't want to see, that are normally not displayed in the game and then get told about it ...but as mentioned before that if we are told that this concerns personal issues it's not something we could........this is something we have to keep fighting with, and that could end up really unhealthy I think...of course if we could quash them for causing such trouble we could have done it.

[Johners]

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YoshiP: But still......I mean, this is related to the conversation we had earlier but to define all things in black and white is something I think I find it stiff....of course this depends on personality as well... of course my real intention here is to do things that are fun, and this is what I've been doing up till now and I try to avoid doing things that cause people discomfort...still, this is getting out of topic but I believe I've been saying more than what I should have in this matter as a member of this company, as a board director, as a gamer, in personal capacity and as someone who obtained full trust from the company, and I've likely touched on this topic more than I should have. So I don't think I'll be able to step into this issue anymore and I think we had enough debates about this already..so yeah, I don't want this game to end up a game that mainly cracks things down and I don't want to create a game like this either. If we have to remove everything then might as well not work on the game and it'll be a game where everything becomes a mess. So even if I get pressed on the issue it's going to be nothing but trouble so yeah I'm sorry that's going to be the answer I'll provide.

OPINION TIME

It's pretty much the same response that he's already given countless times in the past. Ultimately I feel like this highlights the moderation, or lack thereof, that Square Enix actually does in the game around third party tools. They don't want to do the dirty work that would be involved in actually reaching any kind of resolution in this discussion and instead we'll exist in the cycle of someone pushing the boundaries too much, Square Enix making the usual statement and other portions of the community going into their protective stance (saying you should keep them secret etc).

There's a crossover between third party tools and cheating because cheats are just one section of these tools. It's no secret that they're pretty easily available for XIV and this isn't even in reference to more egregious combat addons but rather the PvP plugin/cheat that existed within about a week of Crystaline Conflict being added to the game earlier this expansion. Even in the realm of combat addons, we've since seen an example of someone streaming the most recent ultimate using a GTA-style map/radar telling them where to stand. It was also implied, from the few clips of this we saw, that the user in question was using a rotation helper.

Square Enix don't want to take the bad PR of cracking down on third party tools, potentially losing chunks of their player base and everything that would then entail. However, I feel this is putting the player base onto the dangerous side of if you can't beat them, join them. There's already a status quo of not showing or talking about third party tools, not to mention their ever improving quality, so why not use them? Every update will just make it a game of haves and have nots. We've all seen gathering bots that flood the market with cheap materials, as one example, would one more really be that bad?

For the record, I'm not promoting or condoning outright cheating but MMO players will do just about anything to min-max and gain an advantage which also just includes exploiting/cheating in some scenarios. If it's virtually unmoderated, virtually undetectable by Square Enix, I understand why players do it. Whatever happens, it's a massively complex discussion that challenges years of what players deemed acceptable but also it's one terms of service for the entire player base.

In specific to Yoshi-P's statement, I take issue with his comment mentioning a third party website which we can safely assume is FFLogs. FFXIV is a tab target MMO and these are all incredibly stat driven games. Hiding these stats/numbers doesn't help players that want to improve their performance in organised, high difficulty content. People spamming a DPS meter in a dungeon like it's 2010 WoW can be dealt with as harassment, if someone is being harassed due to their performance, while still allowing people to analyse how their savage prog (for example) is going. This just highlights my initial point of SE not wanting to do dirty work and actually moderate their game.

[Boblawblah]

So business as usual.

[Krokov]

Sounds like he's saying would get rid of them but doing that would be opening a can of worms i.e. I don't like them but we can't do anything about it without causing other issues.

[Conadrium]

Basically he can’t get rid of ff logs and so the only thing he could do is ban anyone who reports there but that would be acting on accts from third party sources which he can’t verify.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Sounds liek he's aware there are people who would go on a Crusade/Report campaign on anybody using any sort of Addon, and he doesn't want to embolden them.
Id say thats smart.

[UnrealTai]

Sounds liek he's aware there are people who would go on a Crusade/Report campaign on anybody using any sort of Addon, and he doesn't want to embolden them.
Id say thats smart.

Pretty much.

If people reporting everyone under the sun when someone in /Shout uses a single swear word wasn't insight into people going on report a report button spree then IDK what is.

Like the sky is gonna fall because someone dropped the F bomb, report em.
Makes me wonder if those people will ever have Netflix 2022

[Azuri]

That's a whole lot of words to say "I understand how fflogs is the only longevity our raids have and removing it will lose us a bunch of money... But we also want them casual money too!".

[BaconBits]

That's one thing I'll never understand. Like, how are you gonna have a bunch of difficult content with hard enrages, but not let anyone know exactly how much damage they're dealing without resorting to either 3rd party addons or shudders digging through the battle log? Not even getting into the fact that said addon also identifies issues such as figuring out who's healing effectively or throwing Medica 2's into the wind, or whether or not people are actively using their mitigation skills.

Like man, even a grading system like in Devil May Cry would serve as better feedback than the Stone Sea Sky trials which can be either overtuned or undertuned depending on your job.

[Floortank]

That's one thing I'll never understand. Like, how are you gonna have a bunch of difficult content with hard enrages, but not let anyone know exactly how much damage they're dealing without resorting to either 3rd party addons or shudders digging through the battle log? Not even getting into the fact that said addon also identifies issues such as figuring out who's healing effectively or throwing Medica 2's into the wind, or whether or not people are actively using their mitigation skills.

Like man, even a grading system like in Devil May Cry would serve as better feedback than the Stone Sea Sky trials which can be either overtuned or undertuned depending on your job.

Actual smart reply.

As a person who has worked extensively in number crunching QA environments, there is no way SE itself is not using tools to parse the battles they're designing. They are likely parsing them as they build them and as they test them, which is how we get the exact balance changes we get patch to patch.

If they need a parser to gauge whether a fight needs to be tuned up or down, they can't actually expect players to be able to play the game without one. They themselves cannot accurately balance the content to an acceptable finish without knowing precisely what individual Job damage numbers are. Players who clear the raids are just unpacking the development process one mechanic at a time and benchmarking progress by parsing DPS numbers, which I promise you is the development process in reverse, but still the same process.