SE Please start caring about your players privacy.

[programcanaan]

Anti-cheat would be a serious loss to both the community and to SE I think. There are many parts of this game that are severely under-developed, so it wouldn't surprise me if there are many out there that compensate for these shortcomings of the game. - and with how neglecting the quality control is, I absolutely wouldn't put it past them to have something wholly ineffective, or something that misfires and bans people because of a specific hardware setup being detected as 'suspicious'

I think they do need to revise their approach. Whether it is being more heavy handed generally, or whether it is something like an approval system for plugins. Or just generally actually caring about what data is exposed client-side, and investing more into infrastructure and the underlying development of the game. For a game that has been running well over a decade, and supposedly aims to run for at least another decade, they need to be making more investment into their infrastructure and code-base, so that it doesn't lead to downright sloppy or needless mistakes/oversights like this happening in the first place

Half of this problem with third-party getting more and more invasive is because they have been so hands off and have tried to pretend like they don't exist, and how they treat this specific case IMO will very much determine how far more developers are willing to go in the future.

An approval system would be a good compromise for all parties. The only reason many players including myself are in favor of anticheat is because the crossplay. Nobody wants to be disadvantaged/left out and is very uncool to have pc/consolencrossplay and not allow consoles the same features. Regulate the modsters and make them be a benefit and make sure they don't take things too far sounds like a win win.

[Vrankyl]

i mean they should 100% revert the blacklist changes or just fix the code itself to hide that data, but the plugin is what made this easily accessable to EVERYONE. creepy stalker plugin aside, if i was SE i would be quite sick of this game after this whole drama tbh, the game has a serious botting problem as well as raid hacking problems due to plugins. the game is beyond compromised, at some point enough is enough although i dont think they will add anti-cheat anyway. looks like they are trying to sweep this whole thing under the rug. personally, ive unsubbed and am not returning until its fixed, and will buy a brand new account since there are databases out there already.

Except, not only would Anti-Cheat not fix this problem it would do absolutely nothing for bots either. I don't know why people view Anti-Cheat as this godlike fix all option that causes no problems and puts an end to all botting. If that was true, World of Warcraft, which uses Anti Cheat, wouldn't have the overwhelming botting problem that it has had since it first launched. Even today you can go out and see hordes of Druid gather bots flying around. All Anti cheat does is impact that average user, in some cases by creating performance issues on machines or by the false positives. And lets be honest, does anyone actually trust SE's current Customer Service team to manage researching and overturning the false positives? I know I don't.

[Daralii]

Except, not only would Anti-Cheat not fix this problem it would do absolutely nothing for bots either. I don't know why people view Anti-Cheat as this godlike fix all option that causes no problems and puts an end to all botting. If that was true, World of Warcraft, which uses Anti Cheat, wouldn't have the overwhelming botting problem that it has had since it first launched. Even today you can go out and see hordes of Druid gather bots flying around. All Anti cheat does is impact that average user, in some cases by creating performance issues on machines or by the false positives. And lets be honest, does anyone actually trust SE's current Customer Service team to manage researching and overturning the false positives? I know I don't.

I think Warden(WoW's anticheat) was also made by Blizzard back when they had talent. If Square tried making their own anticheat, it would probably be as fundamentally flawed as the blacklist, and if they didn't they would presumably just grab something like Denuvo and destroy performance while accomplishing nothing(like Capcom).

[Rehayem]

An approval system would be a good compromise for all parties. The only reason many players including myself are in favor of anticheat is because the crossplay. Nobody wants to be disadvantaged/left out and is very uncool to have pc/consolencrossplay and not allow consoles the same features. Regulate the modsters and make them be a benefit and make sure they don't take things too far sounds like a win win.

I understand why people desire to have anti-cheats, but it's been proven in the past they're easily bypassed, like GameGuard in Helldivers 2, and some can be used to hack your system, like Apex Legends, and others like Vanguard continuously run on your system, even after closing the game, and force-shutting the anti-cheat requires a full system reboot if you wish to play Valorant again.

Most mods are cosmetic/QoL stuff as far as I know, and yet such things should be implemented in the base game from the start: a prime example of this is Viera/Hrothgar hats. It's been 6 years and they haven't really bothered to do much, and it shows. What will then happen? People will resort to other means to get what they want if they wish to play their favorite race.

Ultimately this whole fiasco is due to SE's incompetence and refusal to listen to their players, and when they become sloppy with coding, the result is this malicious code running awry. People can cry bloody murder to introduce anti-cheat, it will be bypassed within minutes. This is exactly what happened when Aion introduced XignCode3, where you basically could copy a file before update, and replace the same file with new update. It took exactly 2 minutes for people to bypass it.

[Naphtalia]

An approval system would be a good compromise for all parties. The only reason many players including myself are in favor of anticheat is because the crossplay. Nobody wants to be disadvantaged/left out and is very uncool to have pc/consolencrossplay and not allow consoles the same features. Regulate the modsters and make them be a benefit and make sure they don't take things too far sounds like a win win.

Modding on console isn't really a restriction implemented by SE. It's a lot more complicated to mod on consoles due to their closed systems/infrastructure and how much more challenging it is to work around the limitations consoles have by default. Some reading if you're curious:

https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/com...soles_and_why/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comm...ly_allowed_on/

I get the frustration of being left out (I was part of that until I saved up enough money to get my own PC and get off my Playstation) but it's kind of going to happen no matter what unless the way consoles are created changes to mimic a PC environment.
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Edit: Wanted to add, I know that with edge cases like Fallout 4 it was up to Bethesda to provide mod support on consoles but they also were comfortable with endorsing mod usage in all of their game versions and it was apparently a deal made between them and Xbox prior to its release (?). Square has stated that they do not endorse or support mod usage in this game at all (even though their actions may speak otherwise) so the odds of them going in the same direction as Bethesda seem slim to none unless they change their viewpoint on mod support and work out a deal with PS/Microsoft respectively.

[Trekkie22]

Just been reading up on this and discussing it with a friend and yikes beyond belief right now.

I think this is the straw that breaks the camels back for me. Forget the game really lacking in casual content or relic content for nearly a year among other glaring issues this is blatant gross negligence.

I'll be cancelling my sub until this nonsense is resolved as I'm already a security conscious person. Never in years of playing an MMO have I seen something like personal character/account data being client side. This is not "oh spaghetti limitations" this is flat out incompetence.

The fact it's been so many days closing in on 2 weeks without an acknowledgement or response is pathetic as well. Most other MMOs would have this acknowledged at least within the first hour or two.

Once Square decide I'm worth having as a customer I'll be back. I don't know what the hell happened between Endwalker and Dawntrail but this game in general has been nosediving hard in my opinion and as I said this issue is just the straw that breaks the camels back.

[Lilapop]

Once Square decide I'm worth having as a customer I'll be back.

See you for 7.16.

[Rinoa_353]

Blacklist and report them, there's nothing else you can do. If you use an alt to craft only, consider crafting in an inn room and using /busy... I think being in an instanced duty is something, but you can't enter a duty on crafters/gatherers. You can't be player searched (ingame, not the plugin) if you're in an instanced duty unless you run into someone running it (plugin) nearby, then your location would be logged (to my understanding)...

I'm so sorry... I can't offer you much comfort but this is the only advice I can give. I don't think many stalkers have the finances to keep buying service accounts just to harass someone one time only to get blocked entirely, not saying it can't happen but at some point the expense might simply not be worth it. (This is why I believe we absolutely need the account wide blacklist to stay)

The issue is that going /busy defeats the purpose of my alt when I won't be able to chat with friends which I do a lot through cwls, parties and more.


They need to make it where if you blacklist someone, it removes you from all of their friend list if they have alts, you don't show up in Player Search results they do, makes you appear offline when they look at your apartment directory and FC if they are in the same FC as you, makes them not see you at all no matter if on alts and new characters created after being blacklisted, they don't see all of your retainers in the MB postings, your yard and inside your home/apartment/FC room (mannequins) and also bans them 24/7 from your housing plots. I like that I don't see them but they can and have been in my yard standing next to me doing who knows what and that is what bothers me, I can't craft in peace from my yard that I normally love doing since I use my housing plots heavily that way. Sure, I can lock the doors and craft inside but then none of my friends can visit me that way

[Clockworks]

See you for 7.16.

Like the 400 000 people that left the game ?

[Trekkie22]

See you for 7.16.

I think that presenting such a sycophantic behaviour towards the game/devs while players also have genuine concerns about their account safety is beyond reproach right now. But you do you I guess.

I've played multiple MMOs since I was a child. I've never heard of Account and Content IDS being stored client side.

This isn't some "it should blow over issue" it's a genuine security concern and the fact we've heard nothing on top of Dawntrail being in my opinion a rather weak entry to the FF14 series is enough to convince me to take a break. I love this MMO, it can and should be better period.

I don't care who has quit the game, I don't care if you believe I'll be back but acting as if this is just some temper tantrum over a legitimate account issue is bewildering to say the least.