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

[Themarvin]

FFXIV is an add-on game now. It took us nine years to get where WoW is, but we finally did it. Many people in this thread are grateful and happy for our plugins. They use them for the same reason WoW players do: QoL and to add new features that take the company a while to do.

Being the “add-on free game” has always been a bragging point for us. “We don’t need add-ons!” we used to tell ourselves. But then we did. And so the gap between FFXIV and WoW has closed. One less argument we have in our favor.

If anything, the games have become outright reversed from where they were two years ago. WoW is easier for new players to grasp thanks to Dragonflight, and WoW players don’t need a smorgasbord of third-party programs running. All plugins are QoL only (graphics mods aren’t allowed), and they all run in-line. FFXIV uses several third-party programs including ACT, Cactpot, Dalamud, and xivlauncher. Their plugins are small and modular, while ours are these behemoths running on spaghetti code and require numerous executables running in the background. And we say this is less add-on intrusion than WoW.

And that’s not to mention the massive growth in popularity that graphics mods have seen in the past year. Even if you don’t use them, you likely know someone who does. And they’re not just client-side: with Mare, you can share your mods with others. Ever see someone with “Mare Lamentorium” in their adventure plates? Yep. And if you think it can’t possibly affect you, try getting into a screenshot contest or do roleplaying without it. The community has changed and it’s not going back. And you’re okay with it.

This is the ideal FFXIV character. You may not like it, but this is peak performance.

SE can fix that with their client, and they should, likewise stop recording to combat logs as well.

And yes they should due to it creates an unfair advantage against Console users.

[Shurrikhan]

SE can fix that with their client, and they should, likewise stop recording to combat logs as well.

And yes they should due to it creates an unfair advantage against Console users.

Or they could just, y'know, continue taking wholesale the best of what those plugins have to offer and integrating them into the base game (many of them being fairly obvious improvements requested since ARR).

Free labor exploited, game improves for everyone; win-win.

[ForteNightshade]

SE can fix that with their client, and they should, likewise stop recording to combat logs as well.

And yes they should due to it creates an unfair advantage against Console users.

The day they ever break ACT to a point where it can't get around their anti-"cheat" is the day their raid scene dies. And they know that. Which is one of the reasons they're never going to touch parsers but forever keep them in a grey area. It's simply far too beneficial for them.

If you're primarily referring to triggers and such. Several of the well known programs can get around the battle log if they ever needed to. The only way you're breaking add-ons is through anti-cheat software everyone will be forced to download. Which creates its own problem, and may not even work. Guild Wars 2 tried that when mods started becoming more prevalent. People got around it within a week. Much like ACT, Square simply benefits too much from the sheer number of people using mods nowadays. Losing ten of thousands of subs just to for the sake of purity isn't something they'll want to do.