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

[Kaurhz]

And cheating isn't okey, yet somehow it's always Raiding tools and not everything else that's the main focus.

I'd like to see the player-base opposing everything equally, but that just is never going to happen.

When something makes its way into the limelight, as it were, people tend to be inclined to jump on this regardless of what that might be.

When people first started advertising brothels etc., people were against it? and guess what? Many even used modding tools as weaponization for this. The bilboard? People were also focused on how this contained mods - Funny enough, there is even a Twitter account dedicated to going on a crusade against reporting and getting Twitter accounts banned that contain modded screenshots or poses.

When Ishgard Restoration rankings first started? People went on a mass crusade about botting, people botting in the community, and thus proceeded a crusade on/against botting, inc., false accusations for those whose only crime was having more spare time than anyone else?

Guess what? Even when they did the interior design competition (what felt like millennia ago) - Quite a few people were also up in arms about this for people that used mods, glitches, bugs etc., to design certain areas of the house.

Wanna know what'd happen if they tried Ishgard Restoration-esque content again with a competitive element? You'd see more botting complaint threads appear.

TL;DR spare me the indignation crusades about raiders being the only folk that gets this treatment.

[CelestiCer]

TL;DR spare me the indignation crusades about raiders being the only folk that get this treatment.

I'll give the same courtesy by quoting only a partial statement I guess...

Having started only since end SHB, As far as I can tell? every thing that's associated with cheating is more often being related with Combat Third-party-Tools. Creating this this prejudice that raiders on average by default abuse them. Even though there 20.000 online active Mare users, Millions of non Combat mods/plugins and files downloaded... and yet Square addresses mostly 1st World Raiders of which represents at best 0.01% of the Total player-base and a fraction of all raiders. Heck the 1000 Lalafell bots underneath the Aetherytes are treated with less malice by the community and Square then the Raiders... " who don't even use Third party tools ", let alone with.

Though I never said Raiders are the only once to get attention out of everyone. The way I meant my phrasing to be taken was " mostly ". But thank you for the history lesson. I'm sure they all got their just banned/suspensions/punishments including the Balmung Billboard players like the Ultimate players did who cheated.

TLDR: Usage of Third Party tools breaks Square's rules regardless of what type you use. Cheating = Cheating. And until I see Square themselves treat it as such equally across the board? I'll spare no indignation crusades/ opinions.

[Kaurhz]

I'll give the same courtesy by quoting only a partial statement I guess...

Having started only since end SHB, As far as I can tell? every thing that's associated with cheating is more often being related with Combat Third-party-Tools. Creating this this prejudice that raiders on average by default abuse them. Even though there 20.000 online active Mare users, Millions of non Combat mods/plugins and files downloaded... and yet Square addresses mostly 1st World Raiders of which represents at best 0.01% of the Total player-base and a fraction of all raiders. Heck the 1000 Lalafell bots underneath the Aetherytes are treated with less malice by the community and Square then the Raiders... " who don't even use Third party tools ", let alone with.

Though I never said Raiders are the only once to get attention out of everyone. The way I meant my phrasing to be taken was " mostly ". But thank you for the history lesson. I'm sure they all got their just banned/suspensions/punishments including the Balmung Billboard players like the Ultimate players did who cheated.

TLDR: Usage of Third Party tools breaks Square's rules regardless of what type you use. Cheating = Cheating. And until I see Square themselves treat it as such equally across the board? I'll spare no indignation crusades/ opinions.

Well, initially, this was the only part of your post that intrigued me enough to respond, and that excerpt felt like a pretty suitable summary of your post.

Then you should probably concern yourself with omitting parts of a 'statement' - That you can't wholly make one on, but enough being brash from me (not entirely warranted) - They get about the same amount of treatment as anyone else, whenever some drama elects to rear up. A lot of this attention is simply derived from how publicly viewed the World First Race has been, if other avenues of this game were to have such then it would be the exact same, realistically. People are tracking world races, but people are not so avidly looking at each and every person to see if their house has been designed using third-party tools, for example. Botting still appears, albeit a little more sporadically, but this also happens in much greater intensity, to where people understand that the presence of botting comes with the territory of certain games, especially MMOs. That being said, I will grant you a few points made in the post.

Regarding botting, this is a little more nuanced than simply nothing, or little being done (Granted, they are woefully underequipped to deal with it using a team the size of the STF) - To put it like this, can you validate that every single botter you see is the exact same botter as last night, for example? You can cut one-off, but 2 more shall take its place, quite comfortably. In a sense, the pace at which they deal with the bots is far slower than the pace at which they are being created. - I could scream at and ascribe malice to the bots all day and night long, but I am woefully aware that I am likely screaming at a programmed script, and not even an actual player.

Most cases I have heard of have been from people being silly enough to quite literally advertise themselves, and their character publicly whilst using such a tool, which in many instances is just irrefutable evidence, and at that point begging to sanctioned. Yes, sure, there are 20,000 users using Mare at any given time, but the number of people actually advertising this information publicly without some elusive way is also much slimmer.

Let me put it like this, people using any tool, publicly, and irrefutably connecting their character name to it, are more than likely to get banned, and it just so happens that some people are obtuse enough to actually advertise themselves doing it, directly, and to inarguably a very large audience at that, hence why it would seem like raiders are targeted, some just happen to be more obtuse than others when it comes to showing things that they really shouldn't be showing, under any circumstances, especially given the advice that has been given.

It comes entirely down to what you yourself show yourself doing, and how well this is connected to your character, and yes. Third-party is third-party, and cheating is cheating.