Is Square losing Money due to 3rd party tool usage?

[Skiros]

Can you imagine how many players would quit if that "FFlogs parsing game" would cease to exist? Tons of people literally live to achieve bragging rights with high percetiles.

good riddance, i used to be one of them in SB. but now all that's done is funnel the raid and job design meta into catering to them. everything is now max-melee-able, everything is 100% uptime. it's so boring. the stuff fflogs discord argues about all day and night is the real cancer of this game.

now people whine and scream if you have to drop a GCD and god forbid a fight has some weird phase push timing or randomness or the fflogs crowd will start screaming about how they have to jump if they don't see dadaluma or fire first.

we truly optimize our own fun away from ourselves. but the developers also should have the guts to ignore the whining from the fflogs crowd. parsing was way more fun when the fights didn't just hand you 100% uptime freely. now it's just a bunch of crit farm junkies.

[CelestiCer]

If you tolerate 3rd-party-tools then it could make some kinds of content unplayable for non-3rd-party-tools-users. Because it will start an arms race

If Square's toleration is limitless
Topic of the thread is about third party tools, of which 95% of it are all Non-Combat. You're only addressing 5% of the Raiding tools. Not all Raiders are cheaters nor want to depend on all Third-party tools to force Square to make infinitely more difficult content. They know however what improves the Raiding experience.

Square knows these third party tools exist, but how many more subscribers is Square really going to reel in with implementing all these improvements themselves rather then letting the player base do it for free? At least if Square done it all themselves? they truly set the bar on what is approved by Square. Improving the Gaming experience where they could meet the players desires in the middle while denying everything they do not want.

Instead we have a mutual silent agreement
Square knows developing everything themselves costs more resources then letting players do it themselves, and players silently love this freedom. It all goes back to YoshiP's statement

" We cannot see what's on your computer " ~ YoshiP

That is all the modding community needed to hear to do whatever they want.. as long as its hush-hush and not advertised. Yet Square and the community act surprised when something happens with Zero Policing. Because they have no way of scanning what players use. Thus players will continue to do what isn't allowed both Non-Raiding and Raiding tools. Even their own Japanese community themselves this time for Omega Ultimate. The community that is the most against these those tools.

And silently? this is what players want.
All this limitless freedom. We all know it. N one wants to give up 100 hairlines for every race that they can't have in default FFXIV or limitless Fantasia without spending a dime. Square and the player-base just won't acknowledge nor admit this. They'd rather blame a smaller part of the player-base that are quite resilient due to the gameplay they throw themselves into. The Raiders. They are used to being treated like crap with poor job changes and job balancing. Being stigmatized is just another Tuesday for them so why not blame everything on them?

I was just curious what players thoughts were regarding if Square is losing out on money. And I don't think they are? They might be missing out on an opportunity of some sort though to improve FFXIV while it being on Square's terms on what is allowed and what isn't... rather then what we have right now which is complete freedom as long as you do not tell what you use? and then be surprised overtime someone uses something that isn't allowed, but players continue to do it all because they can.

[Saraide]

good riddance, i used to be one of them in SB. but now all that's done is funnel the raid and job design meta into catering to them. everything is now max-melee-able, everything is 100% uptime. it's so boring. the stuff fflogs discord argues about all day and night is the real cancer of this game.

now people whine and scream if you have to drop a GCD and god forbid a fight has some weird phase push timing or randomness or the fflogs crowd will start screaming about how they have to jump if they don't see dadaluma or fire first.

we truly optimize our own fun away from ourselves. but the developers also should have the guts to ignore the whining from the fflogs crowd. parsing was way more fun when the fights didn't just hand you 100% uptime freely. now it's just a bunch of crit farm junkies.

Fights shouldnt just give uptime freely or have hitboxes the size of the arena. I doubt however how much the devs were considering the community in that regard because the boss going untargetable for extended periods of time also doesnt strike me as something players want and we keep getting that in major encounters in weird ways.
Stormblood is considered to have by far the better savage fights but we keep moving away from that. This really might just be the vision of the devs coming out instead of them listening to player feedback.

[KageTokage]

I'd say they're gaining money if anything judging from the sheer amount of level 90 DoH/L bots I see.

[Larirawiel]

If Square's toleration is limitless
Topic of the thread is about third party tools, of which 95% of it are all Non-Combat. You're only addressing 5% of the Raiding tools. Not all Raiders are cheaters nor want to depend on all Third-party tools to force Square to make infinitely more difficult content. They know however what improves the Raiding experience.

Umm ... yes. Because i have more a software developer perspective on this topic. And technically there are no differences between combat- and non-combat 3rd-party-tools. Both 3rd-party-tools pull some data out of the client and maybe inject other data into it. And that is the problem. The game client cannot distinguish between them. And SQEX has made the decision, that using 3rd-party-tools is technically possible.

On one hand they save some money. Because if the modders do the modding work then they do not have to do it. But on the other hand, they have to live with some impacts, the combat 3rd-party-tools create.





Cheers

[dspguy]

SE is only losing money if the usage of 3rd party application makes them lose subscriptions.

The better question is... does SE make MORE money with the usage of 3rd party applications....

[Themarvin]

" No " Think of the following tools being denied... If you know you know.

• Mare/Pen/Glam plugins for character modding
• Anam posing and anything NSFW ERP nudity
• Non-combat QOL plugins
• Universalis and the Marketboard plugin
• ACT stops working. FFlogs activity drops
• All QOL Raid tools. Raiding activity drops
• BurningDownTheHouse for Housing decoration
• Technically Gshade approved by Yoshi

And many more tools, if Square made a mandate to truly put their foot down and deny all of it instead of shaking their finger? Square could lose subscribers who love using them and Square knows this.

In Short you only own a copy of the game, your account and everything beyond, SE can do what they want and that messing with software that you do not have the rights to or one way or another datamine is strictly prohibited activity, the final word from the top guy in SE is that ANY third party tools that one way or another on the software front brings you any advantages or one way or another tampers with files and anything about that in those directions IS NOT approved by Yoshi P. that was his final statement, you can go read it yourself.

[SillyCrow]

In Short you only own a copy of the game, your account and everything beyond, SE can do what they want and that messing with software that you do not have the rights to or one way or another datamine is strictly prohibited activity, the final word from the top guy in SE is that ANY third party tools that one way or another on the software front brings you any advantages or one way or another tampers with files and anything about that in those directions IS NOT approved by Yoshi P. that was his final statement, you can go read it yourself.

You're not wrong. Yoshi-P explicitly states that they are not allowed and you can be banned.

What he doesn't do is banning everyone, even with clear cases. You can just stumble in a residential area and randomly enter houses and you could find a lot of glaring third-party tool usage. The only cases we hear about bans are typically cases where the tools are revealed in public. Like that infamous billboard, the ultimate race and so on.

[CelestiCer]

The final word from the top guy in SE is that ANY third party tools that one way or another on the software front brings you any advantages or one way or another tampers with files and anything about that in those directions IS NOT approved by Yoshi P. that was his final statement, you can go read it yourself.

I agree, but it goes back to Yoshi P's own statement which you can also read yourself.

" We cannot see what's on your computer " ~ YoshiP

Difference is they cannot police something they cannot see. Each player has the ability to break the law. Why is that ability's just not removed? I'll give a metaphor. Speed limit is 80miles an hour. Yet you decide to go 110miles. What happens on roads where there are no Camera's and no Police... they will go way above 80miles an hour yes. If you police it though? Square would be less surprised about catching cheaters. Even more if you make a car auto stop at above 80miles (not saying that's safe I am just painting a metaphor). But, Square doesn't have any scanning software so its complete freedom. It might not be " allowed ", but then again they can't see unless someone is making it publicly noticeable. Big difference.

" Prevention is better than Cure "

Why is Square giving players that freedom to do it when its obviously prohibited? Cause they lose money? they probably aren't, otherwise they would be doing something about it since that would be the bottom line of a Business company. Obviously we can only speculate so much.

[CelestiCer]

SE is only losing money if the usage of 3rd party application makes them lose subscriptions.

The better question is... does SE make MORE money with the usage of 3rd party applications....

asking the real questions