Best part of a new patch? Third party tools not working.

[SaitoHikari]

Fun fact: There used to be one extremely popular third party tool back in the Heavensward/Stormblood days known as Guildwork. One of its primary functions was to enable you to see shouts from any zone in the game, which is why you would sometimes see people shouting in dungeons - it was to communicate with everyone else who had that functionality enabled with that third party tool. But the real reason most people used it was because RMT whispers used to be RAMPANT in the Heavensward days, along with like half of Stormblood. Like as soon as you made yourself known in an earlier game major hub area, you would get like 3 bot whispers coming your way, along with RMT mail. Guildwork had the ability to block whispers based on your filters.

As soon as SE solved the rampant RMT advertisement problem by disabling the ability for free trial accounts to whisper and mail by late Stormblood, Guildwork was basically no longer necessary, so its creator opted to stop updating it.

The takeaway here is that if SE wants to stop use of third party tools, it's better to build their functions into the game itself in some way, because the simple reality is that any attempt to break them will NEVER work in the long term. Parsers, for instance, would die overnight if SE allowed you to track your performance in-game. If they have concerns about toxicity, it could always be a party finder option when forming a party that requires consent from all party members at once. You would clearly see which parties have it enabled in party finder, so joining such a party would be your consent. Since it only really matters for high-end content as well, the functionality would only be available for Extreme/Savage/Ultimate content too.

[Akajamu]

Hidden logs huh.

[Kuinn]

A very clear statement of someone who doesn`t cleared any content besides extreme trials XD

[Packetdancer]

I have not tried the mods, but you are telling me that this cacbot will tell you when boss does skills and where to hide?

So, it's worth noting that people conflate "Cactbot" and raid callouts, but from what I've seen Cactbot is really more just a framework on which a bunch of stuff is built. Some of it isn't even related to raids; there's a Cactbot module called "Eureka" which literally just shows the cooldown time remaining on the various FATEs/NMs in Eureka and Bozja, for instance. (Basically, one of those Eureka tracker webpages everyone uses, except that it automatically updates and is right there as an overlay.)

Another module built on it is "Oopsy Raidsy", which I actually do think is an amazing tool for statics. It basically just tallies up any time someone was hit by avoidable damage, any time an AoE heal/shield/mitigation/buff missed someone, etc., and gives you a big table of those instances when a pull ends. When a pull goes wildly wrong, that sort of a breakdown seems extremely useful, and that's functionality I genuinely wish the game itself had. It doesn't make the pull itself easier, but it sure makes figuring out what went wrong afterwards and doing better on the next pull a lot more straightforward.

From what I understand, out of all the various Cactbot-powered stuff, there's really two specific Cactbot-powered modules people object to: one that provides basically a list of countdown timers to the next 3 or 4 (?) mechanics, the other being the one that does automated callouts. (The latter of those being the real "problem child" that gets people up in arms.)

Now, so far as I know, the automated callout one is functionally not a huge amount different than the callouts I as a raid caller make ("Tetra! Stack with buddies!") with a few caveats. The big one is that it can obviously provide personalized callouts targeting your specific responsibility in a mechanic, where there are mechanics I am going to assume my static will take personal responsibility for. I am not going to tell every single member of the group where they need to go for Snakes 1 in P8S phase 1, for instance; I will assume they can figure that out themselves. I would not be shocked if Cactbot's raid callout tool could (or does) tell people specifically what snake to go to.

The other big complaint/problem people have is that it can read mechanics before a human raid-caller like me can; since your client has to receive the command to start the appropriate cast animation, the tool can read that command when it's sent and call the mechanic before the visuals begin. I will admit I've seen this in action, most notably with P3S last tier and with P8S this tier; I've subbed in with someone's static where a raid-caller is using Cactbot, and they are definitely calling that first snake/dog mechanic before the animation has even started on my screen.

(Which, yes, I grant I find a little bit annoying. Not enough to be really up-in-arms about it, but y'know.. mild salt if someone acts like "Oh, just let me do the callouts, I'm faster." Well, yes. YOU'RE FUNCTIONALLY READING NETWORK PACKETS. Anyway.)

But despite that, I can't bring myself to get hugely up-in-arms over it the way some do. I know people who raid who cannot track human callouts over Discord when other people are talking, and I imagine the on-screen text of the Cactbot-powered tools probably is easier for them to track. And if people use it solely as a sanity-check on their own read of mechanics... cool, fine, you do you; it's not really any skin off my nose. But if you blindly trust those callouts and never learn to read the mechanics for yourself, so can't raid on patch day, I do think that's a big problem... and if that impacts my ability to raid, then yeah, it does sort of become my problem by extension.

But as I've said before in many of these threads, I'm just not sure it's a fundamentally different problem than if you never learn to read the mechanics for yourself, acting on blind trust of my callouts as a human, and can't raid if I'm sick or have a family emergency and have to skip raid night (thus can't be there to give callouts).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Kuinn]

Any player can do any content on this game, they just need willpower, you dont need to mald about what other people are using to get there, persuit your own goals and stop wasting time on this board, lol.

[Kranel_San]

Some mods/plugins are extremely helpful on an individual level such as PvP combo system in PvE which should have been an official feature by now to help with accessibility but for some reasons SE don't want to do it.

[Shurrikhan]

Some mods/plugins are extremely helpful on an individual level such as PvP combo system in PvE which should have been an official feature by now to help with accessibility but for some reasons SE don't want to do it.

In Short:

Probably over potential controversy due to fears by those who prefer bloat GCD steps over bloat oGCD actions and/or don't want to lose the ability to hit 12345 instead of 11111 to make the same decision.


Slightly Longer:

Some who really like going 12345 to make a single inseparable decision also don't like managing as many oGCDs, especially if they're less satisfying to press than the typical quality of skill up to that point, and (rightly enough) fear that the devs would feel compelled to replace any buttons made optional by that feature... with further bloat actions. That in turn would make consolidating 12345 into 11111 non-optional.

I don't think that's likely; I think the devs would be plenty willing to leave those then-optional buttons unfilled and would more likely just literally lock out combo steps you haven't yet reached as to level the playing field between those using and not using consolidated combos (with the only difference then being whether one sacrifices handy tactile cues to concentrate their bindings down to a more comfortable space). But, if I had to guess, that'd be the main reason for hesitation.

[Packetdancer]

I don't think that's likely; I think the devs would be plenty willing to leave those then-optional buttons unfilled and would more likely just literally lock out combo steps you haven't yet reached as to level the playing field between those using and not using consolidated combos (with the only difference then being whether one sacrifices handy tactile cues to concentrate their bindings down to a more comfortable space). But, if I had to guess, that'd be the main reason for hesitation.

I don't think the game's well-architected to support having both the combo'd actions and individual ones. You can kind of get around it by just binding the combo on multiple buttons, but it's not quite the same (especially since you then just have multiple buttons you can mash).

And all sarcasm aside, I did genuinely find the old Gunbreaker burst combo more enjoyable; I had Gnashing Fang on 7, Savage Claw on 8, and Wicked Talon on 9, and Continuation on Shift-4. Now, I'll note that I do 7+ on my MMO mouse side buttons, and 1-5 on keyboard (and generally try to avoid using 6 for anything common, because it's an uncomfortable reach), so it was <mouse button A> + Shift-4, <mouse button B> + Shift-4, <mouse button C> + Shift 4 -- and I found that a deeply satisfying sequence every time I got to do it.

Now it's just <mouse button A> + shift-4, repeated three times, and I couldn't tell you why that's slightly less satisfying on a pure dopamine level... but it is. Dumb as that feels to say.

(Well, okay, I mean, that's not the case in the opener, where you mix in stuff slightly in a different order, but you get my meaning nonetheless.)

But I do agree that if the combo tree does not branch, there's really no reason to put them all on separate buttons. I just wish more of the combo chains did branch, so it was like... 1 followed by 2 (and then 3) or 4 (and then 5, and then 6), etc. Like with SAM and such.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think the game's well-architected to support having both the combo'd actions and individual ones.

It's essentially just a matter of adding an extra button per combo that one could then place at will.

That would also solve issues surrounding existing and former consolidations. If one wanted Mirage Dive together, they could just use the Jump+MD key. If they wanted them separate, they could just use the Jump and MD keys, separately. If they just wanted to be able to button-mash Jump without fear of MD going off afterwards but still didn't see any reason to leave MD separate, they could put down Jump and Jump+MD. Win-win.

I just wish more of the combo chains did branch, so it was like... 1 followed by 2 (and then 3) or 4 (and then 5, and then 6), etc. Like with SAM and such.

Personally, I wish they all branched at every step (including the first), for a kind of geometric configuration (3 by 3 choices, though some of those may cap out and lead back to the base sooner), or at least had some interface for skipping ahead at cost. I like having more GCD buttons. I just wish they weren't a matter of, say, spending up to 10 buttons on what are presently just 3 actions (spread over 3 to 5 steps).

[CelestiCer]

How many Mods/Plugins/Tools were made for Raiding vs anything Non-Raiding? Isn't like 95% of the game like not Raiding content?

• Body/Hair/Tattoo-mods
• NSFW anything
• Glamour-mods
• Gpose
• Housing furniture placement and identification
• UI & Hud customizations and coloring
• Crafting and Gathering anything
• Chat and Emotes anything
• Weather control
• Daily schedule routine reminders
• Deep Dungeon anything
• Orchestrion player anywhere
• PvP QOL plugins

Knowing or not knowing usage of 3rd party tools isn't going to affect you in-game. How come people default to condemning Raiders though? Even the once that "don't use any". Think we failed as a community here... cause we're progressive and inclusive... we should be condemning everything!

• Voicechat is a 3rd party tool
• Your Mouse/Keyboard/Phone are 3rd party tools
• Your second Monitor is a 3rd party tool
• Your monitors having higher refresh rate is a 3rd party tool
• Your better internet connection is a 3rd party tool
• Your roof keeping you dry during rain when playing is a 3rd party tool

Heck that coffee-maker that makes coffee that increases your DPS output by 1 OGCD is a 3rd party tool =u=;; ( this is not a scientific proven fact don't quote me on this last one )

Yoshi-P made his stance clear as is the ToS.
Square knows however the potential loss of players if Plugins are completely denied by making something that detects Plugins. It's best for Square to update and improve the game that makes a lot of the plugins unnecessary by default.