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

[Heroman3003]

Do you fully comprehend the number of players currently employing third-party tools? Let's assume they do all get banned. You know what happens? FFXIV stops being lucrative because they will have just shot most of their cash cows in the head. This would legitimately kill the game faster than just about anything else. It won't just be this game that goes under, either - it will hit Square-Enix hard.

SE has already been having a bit of a rough time of it lately courtesy of a number of factors, not the least of which being multiple mediocre releases and their own shady business practices. Having FFXIV's influx of cash kicked out from under them would be a crippling blow to the entire company. I don't think for a minute it would be enough to put SE under fully, but it would definitely hurt them. They're already cutting a lot of corners in their games, and this would force them to cut even more. It's a spiral most gaming companies never recover from. They were only saved from it back in the 80s by the original Final Fantasy, which was named final because they very much expected it to be their last release before the company, then just Square (or SquareSoft, in the US), went under.

tl;dr: If SE gets rid of everyone using third-party tools and/or mods, they will probably deal irreparable harm to their own company.

Not to take sides too hard here, but regardless of how many people use mods, I genuinely think you're severely overestimating amount of people who would be willing to permanently quit the game over the blockage. In fact, Id say among those who use them, only superminority actually has their enjoyment of the game RELY on the mods, rather than just being enhanced by them. An annoyingly loud minority, but a minority nevertheless.

[Absimiliard]

Not to take sides too hard here, but regardless of how many people use mods, I genuinely think you're severely overestimating amount of people who would be willing to permanently quit the game over the blockage. In fact, Id say among those who use them, only superminority actually has their enjoyment of the game RELY on the mods, rather than just being enhanced by them. An annoyingly loud minority, but a minority nevertheless.

Reread what the person I am responding to said. They were calling for a blanket ban of everyone using mods, as in players being permanently removed from the game by Square-Enix. No mention was made of anyone quitting.

I do think you're gravely underestimating the number of people that would quit if mods were somehow defeated, however. Would it be a majority? No, but it would be enough to make the game a good bit less lucrative than it is. ...And considering FFXIV and the mobile games are about the only things keeping SE alive right now, that probably isn't in their best interest.

[Heroman3003]

Reread what the person I am responding to said. They were calling for a blanket ban of everyone using mods, as in players being permanently removed from the game by Square-Enix. No mention was made of anyone quitting.

I do think you're gravely underestimating the number of people that would quit if mods were somehow defeated, however. Would it be a majority? No, but it would be enough to make the game a good bit less lucrative than it is. ...And considering FFXIV and the mobile games are about the only things keeping SE alive right now, that probably isn't in their best interest.

And unlike them I am realistic in my entertaining of the possibility that the blockage happens. There will almost certainly be advance warning of it, system itself most likely will just block usage of existing mods rather than be about punishing players for using them and those that manage to modify the game anyway will be treated no different than they are now - innocent until proven guilty. And even there, it will probably go down the usual rung of starting with lightest punishments like warnings.

Thing is, people in this thread doomsay a lot about 'if mods are blocked SO MANY people will quit the game' and I cant help but think of how far up in the clouds the heads of those that think that that many people will actually quit the game over it must be.

And all the talks of intrusive anti-cheats are silly as well. SE's game is bare naked in terms of most basic protection. They can make game much more anti-mod by just upping the security of the game without need to scan systems of users for other programs and files. But it'd be a giant undertaking of fundamental level of the spaghetti and sticks the game is built on, which is the true main reason thats so unlikely to happen.

[Ransu]

Not to take sides too hard here, but regardless of how many people use mods, I genuinely think you're severely overestimating amount of people who would be willing to permanently quit the game over the blockage. In fact, Id say among those who use them, only superminority actually has their enjoyment of the game RELY on the mods, rather than just being enhanced by them. An annoyingly loud minority, but a minority nevertheless.

I'd say easily 1 out of every 3 players is using some kind of mod/plugin whether it be data type stuff or graphical. I know the RP community religiously uses bubble chat addons and they are a extremely large population of players in this game.