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

[Ransu]

When you look up the definition of a no life loser it shows this screenshot.

[SaitoHikari]

...Hmm... then I need some clarification. Not just from you, but from other people who know better. Preferrably a moderator with knowledge on this.

First, I'd like to clarify something myself. I hope you're not expecting Reshade/Gshade. I don't use them because my PC kinda doesn't like it. Last time I used ReShade, it was on Skyrim. SKYRIM of all things, that game's older than gay marriage has been legal in the UK. And the fan started screaming at me. So I doubt my PC would agree with those things being on at all on an MMO. So I don't have it installed, be it on FF14, GW2, PSO2 or whichever other MMO.

The ones I use are in my NVidia card :x They're no different than me tweaking the settings of my monitor. Is Square disallowing me changing my graphic card's settings or my monitor's settings so I can tell hues apart? Because I don't think they can implement a program to scan for addons and block the graphics card. If they do, the graphics card won't work, and thus the game won't render. I doubt it'd even load. Nvidia shaders aren't a third party tool necessarily. They are third-party, but they are just as much as my CPU or monitor are. I kinda can't play without it???

I admitted I use shaders, yes... Nvidia shaders. Because, as I've explained before, changing the saturation down on things like FF14's colourblind mode does is insufficient. I need something to help me tell some stuff apart. And even then, it doesn't give me any upper edge in any case, because even with that on, P3S was a disaster. I can't tell orange apart from orange, some stuff is too faint for me to tell. It's not making stuff brighter or darker that's going to make a change on it, because it's all orange. I'd need a better indicator altogether, and I can't get that unless SE actually goes into the fight and changes how the indicators are displayed. All that I do with my shaders is just change how certain values are rendered so I can tell them apart, making dark stuff darker and bright stuff brighter.

See, this is one of the cases where I wish a mod could step in to clarify, if possible. Because I don't know whether I'm doing wrong or not. For me, this is no different than me changing the brightness setting on my monitor. But illegality isn't up to me, and I'm sorry but not you either, to decide. It's up to Square. And right now, I don't know where Nvidia stands, so I'm not even certain if what I'm using is illegal or not. If it happens to be, then I'd like to be properly informed of it so that, yes, I do stop using it.

I have no association with SE, but I have moderated for a different MMO in the past.

In the absolute strictest definition, using any third party tool would be a bannable offense, as it is written in the TOS (though it's been years since I last looked at it).

Is it enforceable though? Realistically, no. You need absolute proof that a person is using one, and some of the methods to obtain that absolute proof that SE likely won't ever entertain would run them afoul of privacy laws in some countries. So in order for a player to get banned, they'd either have to openly admit it, or they'd have to get reported along with the person reporting submitting enough proof of their guilt. And even then, SE may still not act for whatever reason, or if they do, they won't tell anyone. And they shouldn't tell anyone of exactly what enforcement actions they take against specific players, because that's how you get empowered Karens in the community thinking like they have a free moral ticket to start abusing the report system. In the MMO that I once moderated for, the moderation staff had a very public presence on the forums, and there were people trying to play politics with us. I myself made the very dumb decision to have played a part in that too, and I do not blame SE one bit for not having a public presence in the XIV forums. I will simply tell you that you don't want empowered Karens in the community.

This is why things like harassment gets moderated far more often at first glance, because the staff can pull up chat logs proving that said harassment took place. I distinctly recall that when I ran E4S with my static group about three years ago, there was a Dragoon who was forcibly yanked out of the instance and placed right into GM gaols. The GM mentioned that they were observing us and were waiting for us to end our raid session for the day, but couldn't wait any longer when we decided to go past our usual end time. What did the Dragoon do to attract the GM's ire? The story goes that during the day before, the Dragoon was in a random E4N party, and he cussed out the healer because the healer (purposefully, as the Dragoon alleges) rescued him into an AoE which got him killed, and said healer presumably reported him for that. The GM otherwise told the Dragoon that he or she was cheering us on in our efforts to clear E4S before letting them off with a warning. The experience told me that SE staff has the power to observe specific instances and maybe even pull up recordings of them too.

So why did they act against this Ultimate raid group for cheating, and not the thousands of people using parsers? The evidence was basically by their own admission, they used third party programs that granted an actual advantage that couldn't be reproduced through normal means, and knowledge of this was very, VERY public. I'd say the harshness of the punishment (which I fully agree with) was probably amplified by the idea that it was as close to an international incident as this game's community could get, considering the Japanese raid community LOVED accusing the NA/EU raid communities of doing the same before this happened. Not only that, knowledge of this incident hit mainstream news in Japan too.

SE's stance on third party programs has consistently remained as such, going off of their behavior:

1) They won't punish you for merely using them, UNLESS...
2) The programs are being used to harass someone else, or granting an actual gameplay advantage. IIRC they didn't go after specific streaming raiders for parsing until toxic Twitch chat started harassing specific players with evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the source could be traced back to the stream.

SE would probably love to ban all use of third party programs, but from a pragmatic standpoint, going after the majority of cases is a waste of time that they simply don't have the manpower for, and would have no real tangible benefit to the community at large. So they only really go after the people that cross into the second point. Of course, the complete irony of someone going on a crusade against people merely using parsers and visual mods, like that Twitter clown, is that they in turn are probably breaking the TOS in a way that SE would consider far more serious. As in, actual harassment.

[solimiano]

...snip.

Honestly I don't know, the initial stance was don't tell, don't get caught, and everything is fine, then the mods kept evolving and all these debacles started happening, it's now the second time Yoshi had to intervene and have a blanket ban on all mods because of some black sheep...
I also can't go into details about shaders since I only have what the ps5 can output, it's not the same as having options in a pc.

Because of a few, now everyone suffers, blanket statement saying all mods are forbidden, and to those that go on about witch hunts and stuff, that was related to the first debacle were the community started mass reporting all the streamers using mods... Streaming with mods visible after the director of the game makes an official post stating all mods are forbidden, what do you really expect.
Same thing now, blanket statement with supporting evidence so noone can say there are grey areas, all and any mods are forbidden.
The best resolution would be to engage with the creators of the mods that serve as qol, and integrate them as part of the official game.
That would without a doubt remove all the excuses to use mods besides cheating.
On the other hand they might go the route of FFXI absolute virtue, wich was impossible to clear when it launched, and if anyone clears it... Well you know they were cheating...
At the end of the day the game belongs to square, they put a statement all mods are forbidden, if they implement some way of checking for said mods and start banning people it won't be pretty.
In terms of the financial side, you also have to take into consideration their culture and how honor is present within it, if it starts making headlines in Japan about overspread cheating, it might actually hurt them more than losing the money from the subs.
To many things for a console peasent like me to consider, but I do hope they move in the right direction

[Midareyukki]

I just sent them a question on the EU support desk on this. Currently waiting on them to reply. Hopefully they do though xD

Does anyone know if they take long?

And yes, I did clarify everything as best I could, explain what it is that I'm using and even some other stuff that is technically third party (and the ToS does NOT discriminate) but is otherwise seen as harmless, such as changing the contrast on your monitor.

I also ended with "If it turns out it's illegal, then yes, I will naturally stop using them"

[BaconBits]

When you look up the definition of a no life loser it shows this screenshot.

Funny, that doesn't look like me.

[solimiano]

I just sent them a question on the EU support desk on this. Currently waiting on them to reply. Hopefully they do though xD

Does anyone know if they take long?

And yes, I did clarify everything as best I could, explain what it is that I'm using and even some other stuff that is technically third party (and the ToS does NOT discriminate) but is otherwise seen as harmless, such as changing the contrast on your monitor.

I also ended with "If it turns out it's illegal, then yes, I will naturally stop using them"

Hopefully you'll get a reply, probably during the week I would assume, I don't think they ever took more than 3 days to reply to any of my questions, but noone of them were as complex as yours...

[Midareyukki]

Hopefully you'll get a reply, probably during the week I would assume, I don't think they ever took more than 3 days to reply to any of my questions, but noone of them were as complex as yours...

My only fear is that I get shoved into Mordion Gaol for asking "Hey, Square, is what I'm doing illegal?" XD Like, they can take me saying "uh, actually I've been using this thing, is it bad?" as confirmation and shoot me for it.

[Absimiliard]

I see we're still pretending PS5 players can't use mods.

[solimiano]

I see we're still pretending PS5 players can't use mods.

And there you go again, from what you explain yesterday at most you could use the parsing thing, can you inject graphical mods into the PS5 though the use of pc?
Can you use addons that tell you where to move on? Can you use call outs, can you use the chat bubbles?
Because if you can, theres a few guys that would love your expertise into this, they still haven't managed to jailbreak the ps5...
So way to much trouble in the first place, second you actually need a pc, yes you explain that it can be a crap pc, but you still need one, and enough technical knowledge to be able to get the information that's leaving your console to the server, and I presume from the server back to the console.

Did I miss something from your post yesterday?

[Midareyukki]

...well. That path was about as useful as One-Ilm Punch used to be.

I guess it's better to just err on the side of caution and just not use anything major.

You know what that means If I cause you guys to wipe because I can't see anything, it's not my fault!!