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

[Payadopa]

Their party their rules.

You're free to start your own static where it's not mandatory.

Technically, if it is against ToS it's not about 'their' rules. Not that I particularly care. My static is chill and PF is uh.. PF.

[Saraide]

Technically, if it is against ToS it's not about 'their' rules. Not that I particularly care. My static is chill and PF is uh.. PF.

In PF and in statics there is no right a player has to be in that group. The group leader does not need a reason at all to remove you from their group. Statics arent even official ingame groups, it's just informal. The ToS can not force a PF host or static leader to keep you in a group. So yes, it's 'their party, their rules'.

[Payadopa]

In PF and in statics there is no right a player has to be in that group. The group leader does not need a reason at all to remove you from their group. Statics arent even official ingame groups, it's just informal. The ToS can not force a PF host or static leader to keep you in a group. So yes, it's 'their party, their rules'.

I agree, as long as it is within the ToS. Regardless of what this echo chamber makes you think. I find it funny that that needs pointing out. lol Anyway.

[Saraide]

I agree, as long as it is within the ToS. Regardless of what this echo chamber makes you think. I find it funny that that needs pointing out. lol Anyway.

Nope, I could kick you from a PF over low dps because of a parser I have opened and there is nothing you could do about it.

[Midareyukki]

Nope, I could kick you from a PF over low dps because of a parser I have opened and there is nothing you could do about it.

There is.

If you say specifically that it's because of the numbers you're seeing in the parser, you can get reported. Because at that point it'll be perceived as you using illegal tools (even ones that are in a gray area) to stop someone's progress.

There are ways around this, however. Ultimately the important thing is that you don't tell people that you're using parses, nor that they are the reason why you're kicking them out. As long as you remain quiet about that specifically, sure, you can kick without any fuss, you can allegate differences in playstyle and be done with it. The moment you bring up parses, you're giving them a reason to report.

[Saraide]

There is.

If you say specifically that it's because of the numbers you're seeing in the parser, you can get reported. Because at that point it'll be perceived as you using illegal tools (even ones that are in a gray area) to stop someone's progress.

There are ways around this, however. Ultimately the important thing is that you don't tell people that you're using parses, nor that they are the reason why you're kicking them out. As long as you remain quiet about that specifically, sure, you can kick without any fuss, you can allegate differences in playstyle and be done with it. The moment you bring up parses, you're giving them a reason to report.

Who said I was going to give a reason? This is additional fabrication I was not talking about.

[Laerune]

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?

[Ransu]

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?

It has timers and gives you basic info of mechanics.

[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)_/¯

[Kuroka]

Thoughts and prayers are with this players in these trying, plugin-less times...

Fun topic, gettin this send from an Friend reminded my why i hate all that mods so much...