Another rant about S ranks

[JellaW]

I'm not afraid of being doxed.

Doxing? Looking up my static? Now this is bad quality bait.

I made my points about automation, and that I would be fine if Square Enix enforced their Terms of Service for once. On your last point, our spawner group goes out of its way to share hunts with everyone. And that includes recommending not using these automating plugins, to give a fair chance to console/vanilla players too. Sorry for ruining your conspiracy theory.

[LibitIncarne]

Looking up my static?
On your last point, our spawner group goes out of its way to share hunts with everyone.

I only called out your Warrior because they're dumb enough to have the same name for their FFLogs account as their IGN.

And you know that's a lie. You (Faloop) have considerable input delay on releasing hunts that goes beyond the reasonable delay you'd expect it to take of a person in the community to click the spawnpoint of an s rank on a map.
A console player in a hunt LS/CWLS that has someone who links FiloBot relays will have a fairer chance at getting to most hunts than a vanilla player in your discord.

[JellaW]

And you know that's a lie.

Sorry, we aren't here to wage your war against community discords.
Once again, you ignore the points I made: even someone in those linkshells getting Centurio relinks (which we both know come from plugins) still cannot compete with automation.
Those console/vanilla users in the linkshells will still be blocked on server transfer queue by dozens of people automating the transfer, teleport and instance change. They are left with no options, and to trust the automating players will not burst down the mark.

Investing in faster server transfer infrastructure would help alleviate this issue.

[Jojoya]

Fascinating stuff coming from an internet stranger. As we talked on discord, it's true that these automating plugins exist, are used by several people on each datacenter, and block the server transfer queue for several minutes for vanilla/console users that cannot compete with automation.

If these plug-ins are intentionally creating transfer queue issues, have you reported them (the plug-ins, not the players) to Square Enix for investigation?

Square Enix is more than happy to look the other way for most mods/plug-ins because they are more informational/visual to the individual player (for instance those that change HUD appearance without displaying additional combat information meant to be hidden from the HUD). Even the hunt mod that so many like to worry about is more informational in nature than anything else, primarily acting as a substitute linkshell for relays in the current hunt client.

But SE will go after the others that that cause disruption to the game and/or create significant unfair advantage. They definitely would be interested in knowing about one that disrupts transfer queues.

* * * *

As an aside to both you and LibitIncarne - in the long run, you're both on the same side. You don't need to be at each other's throats. Yes, there's massive hypocrisy going on at Faloop with the "requires manual input" excuse being used to whitewash what happens behind the scenes with many of the vetted spawners. Quite honestly, that's up to the Faloop community to address internally. While some of their spawners are using the plug-ins, etc. others are not. Not everyone there is guilty. Some of them simply like using the Faloop app for tracking more than they like using Bear Toolkit. Or they're like me. They mostly keep their distance from Faloop but retain reporting privileges as a backup in case other Faloop reporters aren't available to report spawns and kills. They're more interested in helping to keep the community informed than getting involved in the drama.

The Faloop app/Discord is still a tool to help the community, same as Centurio Hunts Discord and Bear Toolkit. Hunters are free to choose between which they prefer to use (or even use both) to track and send/receive relays outside of the game's linkshell network.

What's important is that the community need to recognize that Square Enix sets the game's rules for the Hunt.

Faloop does not. Centurio does not. Linkshells and other player organized communities do not. They can only set rules for who they will accept as members.

As far as Square Enix is concerned, the Hunt is kill-on-sight content. Hunt marks may not be used for MPKs. Players may not reset hunt marks already engaged by other players. Pretty much anything goes outside of that as long as it's not a clear cut violation of the ToS.

If someone wants to pull a hunt mark as soon as they're in attack range, they can do so regardless of what other players plan to do. There is no requirement to wait. There is no ownership of a hunt mark allowing one player to tell others what they may or may not do. It is open world content, and that means it's open to every player regardless of their playstyle.

[JellaW]

Thank you, but again this isn't the place to argue about community organization. If anything, every datacenter is different, and each community is entitled to organize between themselves.

Rather, I wrote here regarding a gameplay disadvantage for a sizable amount of players, due to the actions of others, and offering feedback to the developers in how to mitigate it. Commenting on hunting communities is a distraction from that.

I'll look into reporting those automated plugins, ty.

[george357]

some things never change they just get worse and now the company steps in to make it even worse will watch and see how bad it gets.

[Celine_Aurora]

I didn't read a single post besides OP, but it's overworld content, if you miss it tough luck; you are not owed an achievement completion.

Good luck! It's a jungle out there.