Would you be opposed to SE implementing a program to scan for addons/parsers?

[Fawkes]

They don't like to spend money and that would probably cost money. It's more likely they'd stop making Ultimates altogether, then there's less reason to cheat.

[Wyssahtyn]

the absolute smooth brains of people using "wElL i DoN't HaVe AnYtHiNg To HiDe!" as an argument.

[SaitoHikari]

The vast majority of online games published in the past 23 years have had anti-cheats, whether you realize it or not. FFXI and FFXIV stand alone among major online games. For everyone in this thread complaining about anti-cheats, I want you to uninstall Steam and close your account. You say you’d leave this game, so why not leave the others as well? Why are we exceptional?

By the way, we don’t need an anti-cheat to turn off plugins, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of our (and Square’s) field of expertise.

I’m pretty sure everyone already knows this, the actual argument is whether it’s actually worthwhile for the devs to pursue.

The only anti cheat I’ve ever seen that was actually any effective is the one Genshin Impact uses, and it’s also famously one of the most intrusive ones ever known. To the level where the game forces you to run it in administrator mode, there are entire conspiracy theories around the necessity of its existence considering it’s developed by a Chinese company, and hackers a while back actually reverse engineered its code for use in their malware.

[Arzalis]

The level of invasiveness they'd need to have anything worthwhile means I'd just stop playing immediately.

I've never played Valorant or a few other games for similar reasons. Besides, it'd be a bit of a slap in the face for SE to implement some kind of client-side detection instead of use that development time to actually make the game better. Especially for a dev team that consistently claims things are impossible until they're shamed into implementing it by third party stuff that proves it's actually possible.

[Nihility]

those things don't actually do anything more than eat up cpu and ram
the people making mods just look at what it's looking for and go about it a different way, everyone else just suffers for no good reason

A parser is literally just reading the data the game log is already generating and putting it in an easier to understand format for instance
it's not really the kind of thing one of those nprotect type programs could even detect without being incredibly invasive

You used to be able to change client side zoom by simply changing a number in the .cfg file. No program needed at all, for all I know you still can. used to have to go into that file all the time to fix game loading issues but whatever caused that seems to be fixed by now

The things that do automated call outs is just a timer synced to the pull. Can have it not even interacting with the game at all if you wanted
Solution to that is making the fights actually be interactive instead of just an intricately tuned by the numbers dance routine

I don't use any mods myself but logically it gets to a point where it's like... "is discord bannable?" "is watching twitch while playing bannable?" "is listening to itunes bannable?" "is a stopwatch bannable?" "is a keyboard with macro keys bannable?"

The solution is making the game not need that stuff to begin with. I mean like no buff timers and damage types being hidden for how many years before they finally fixed it?

[Ardeth]

I don't use addons. I never will. In saying that the launcher is enough drm for me. They do that and I will quit and I have nothing to fear from the addon/plugin police. That's just too invasion to punish a handful of players.

[Takamorisan]

Unless they make mechanics where they are required but that will spawn the same problem with WoW. New players WILL get confused with the addon culture and weak auras turning PvE more hostile. Why don't you have X addon installed? Wth is your problem ? etc etc

[Necrotica]

The vast majority of online games published in the past 23 years have had anti-cheats, whether you realize it or not. FFXI and FFXIV stand alone among major online games. For everyone in this thread complaining about anti-cheats, I want you to uninstall Steam and close your account. You say you’d leave this game, so why not leave the others as well? Why are we exceptional?

By the way, we don’t need an anti-cheat to turn off plugins, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of our (and Square’s) field of expertise.

I mod my steam games like crazy what on earth are you talking about?

[TheGrimace]

Console user here, sometimes PC user who still has never used a single add-on:

The discourse on Third-Party Tools that screw with the legitimacy of wins and stuff is really bad, but there are lots of add-ons out there that people use that I appreciate the existence of. Things like in-game chat bubbles for player text (TAKE NOTE, SE!), or player fixes for vastly needed things like Viera and Hrothgar hats. The game as a whole benefits from these and SE needs to take note and actually fix things, because players are only doing it themselves because SE is too slow on the draw.

I don't endorse any kind of add-on that unfairly skews gameplay for one's favor, but if you start invasive file checking on the game client and PC files, it's not going to end well for literally anyone involved. This would be a scorched earth approach and should be avoided at all costs.

[Vahlnir]

I don't think this would be a good idea. Such a scan conflicts with laws in random countries as well, so they would lose a good bit of money. They would benefit more by making add-ons and mods less desired by adding requested features to the game.