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

[Shurrikhan]

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

Nah, pretty sure mods for going futa is solely a raid buff and would only ever be used by raiders.

...raiders of what, you may ask?

[Packetdancer]

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

Mm... yes and no. The issue is that given how the hotbars work, it would likely have to be a second copy of the entire combo... or you would need a sort of hotbar action abstraction system (which I suspect is how the mod that consolidates combos in PvE likely works).

The latter would be the better approach, honestly. Especially because you could then functionally make it a 'build your own combo' system; instead of "here is a pre-made button that is your entire chain", you would just have a little hotbar-like list you could drag actions onto, then you'd drag the icon for that list onto a hotbar. Each time you pressed the button, it would send the current action, and advance one step.

For those who just want their 1-2-3 on a single button, that handles it easily. From an accessibility standpoint, it wins for flexibility because someone could put a mix of GCD and oGCD into a single button. For instance, someone could make a combo button that was (to use SGE as an example) "Eukrasia" followed by "Prognosis", and then they could just hit that button twice quickly to do Eukrasian Prognosis.

I've mentioned this in other threads touching on accessibility, but back in the WildStar closed beta I had a dear friend who had severe nerve damage to his hands from his time in the military. He could barely type coherently when his hands seized up, and hitting any sort of precision button combo was... let's just go with "a non-starter" at those times. The solution I came up with for him was something sort of like what I describe above: I wrote a tool that let him create those sort of combos, and then bind it to like... 6-9 different keys. So, for instance, he might have an attack rotation in a combo cycle that was bound to `, 1, 2, 3, and q. Then as long as he hit that general area of the keyboard -- which was doable even when his hands were seizing up -- he'd do the action he meant to. And there was a keybinding to toggle that mode on and off, so he could also (try) to type normal text in the chatbox.

Unfortunately, he passed away due to pneumonia before I finished the project, and I lost heart and handed the code off to someone else. (Get your flu shots!)

But if we want to approach the PvP-style combos in PvE as an accessibility thing, I think I'd rather do it more like that -- a more open-ended system, that can address more use cases -- than simply consolidating the 'stock combos' each into a single cycling key. Especially since that solution would allow people both to do the consolidated combos or to leave the actions split across multiple separate keys, as best suited their taste.

(Sorry, accessibility is a thing I have come to take very, very seriously in game design.)

[CelestiCer]

Nah, pretty sure mods for going futa is solely a raid buff and would only ever be used by raiders.

...raiders of what, you may ask?

Twitch is a 3rd party tool uh-huh. Lets condemn Streamers as well for ... Streaming!! obviously

[Vahlnir]

Twitch is a 3rd party tool uh-huh. Lets condemn Streamers as well for ... Streaming!! obviously

(I kid. Streamers are fine.)

[Packetdancer]

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.

I don't write mods for FFXIV for a variety of reasons (save general-purpose game-agnostic shaders that have been folded into GShade)... but for games where I have been a mod author, I have usually said that my "victory condition" for a given mod is "the devs realize this is useful enough / improves things enough that they fold the feature into the game and I no longer have to maintain it."

I would not be shocked if many of the FFXIV mod authors had that same mindset.

[BristolRuss]

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.

Not quite true. The developer got a job at Discord and didn't have the time to dedicate to Guildwork anymore.

[Saraide]

Stop being a slave to politics.

That's such a Gamer thing to say.

[Lunalepsy]

Just posting here for my daily dose of drama.

[Midareyukki]

Nah, pretty sure mods for going futa is solely a raid buff and would only ever be used by raiders.

...raiders of what, you may ask?

The Lost Ark ;D because they're in for some booty

...

I'll stop.

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!

Let's also not neglect the fact that UNFORTUNATELY Viera and Hrothgar players felt reliant on the modding scene to have a more complete experence in the same vein as every other paying subscriber here.

Especially, you know, the one race that needed to pay a fantasia just to change "hairstyle".

3rd Party tools should not be viewed as the norm, and I support that view. However, there are plenty of third party tools made available (for PC players, sorry console players) who have zero impact other than quality of life. Stuff unrelated to allowing more than certain waymarks, stuff unrelated to parsing. Especially when Square Enix's response to player demand has been inconsistent and zig-zaggy. And I say "Unfortunately" because at the end of the day, yeah, third party software shouldn't have as much an impact in the community as it currently is having.

But Square's stance is comprehensive. Third Party Tools are a window to a lot of nasty stuff they don't want to handle, so it's to be frowned upon and not used. However, they won't police people because there are some tools that fall into a gray area, and other tools also draw in attention to the game as it is, allowing people to feel more invested in their character if it happens to have detriments.

So if Square isn't going to police it, why are people having their knickers in a twist over something that doesn't affect them?

Because they can be lewded with mods? Sorry but that's on the modder and you can, and should, report them asap. Because that's frowned upon by modders as a whole, and there are ways to only apply mods to your own character.
Because they can be harassed with parses? You're gonna get kicked out for underperforming either way, parses just make it easier. It's still frowned upon and considered a stupid thing to do, something SE DEFINITELY slams down on when caught. But it would otherwise be no different than me using in-game stuff to achieve the same thing, like your numbers or melds.

These things happen so rarely, yet people fear it irrationally. I attribute this both to a lack of skin when dealing with these things, and also exacerbated perception of something negative.
It's like the fear of flying. You know accidents happen, but some people still fear it even though you have more chances of getting into a car crash than a plane crash.

Let's also not forget that BLM and MNK needed tools to parse the servers' ticks to ensure they made the most out of their class. Something that has since led to the classes being changed. Sometimes a wrong happens to make a right.

[CelestiCer]

*snip*

Certainly agree with your points
Many stated and I agree that largely Developers making plugins aren't doing it out of Malice, but mostly to improve FFXIV's experience and showing Square possible upgrades and features. Hrothgar/Vierra hair included to name a few. Square knows this! and rather then pooling their own resources? they have a policy that they are not policing as you said, they are looking the other way. This costs them less money and resources, solving a lot of issues on themselves by the community even if its against ToS.

For the player-base, be it I think a minority in the west? To demonize everything so quickly? And auto default relating plugins to mostly Raiders? a tad misleading and provocative... If only we had the same valor towards all Plugins like NSFW / Lewd / Nudity / RMT etc but of course they wont... even when raiding makes up 5% or 10% at best of FFXIV =u=;