On "Infringing upon Others" and "Negatively impacting design"

[Valence]

First I'd like to show appreciation for the letter of the producer on mod culture that took the time to tell us more of his mind on the matter and clarify a few things.

Now while I still find it's beating around the bush a little too much and could need further clarification, and putting aside that I find a bit ludicrous that one of the reasons to crack down on Mare that was brought up can literally be boiled down to "sharing visual mods negatively affects bragging rights for players that ran an ultimate", I do understand other more serious concerns like the spreading of NSFW mods publicly and damaging the image of the game. But again on the latter, it's not Mare that was posting NSFW screenshots on social media, but players at the individual level, which makes me a little puzzled once more on the examples being given and the justifications that go with it.

However seeing talks about infringement upon others negatively, bragging rights, mogstation rights, or anything else, this immediately makes me wonder about other third party tools like fflogs and tomestone. They are not visual mods and don't modify games files directly, but they certainly do have a wide spread impact over the whole game and community, and some sides that I can safely say, are clearly negative and infringing upon others.

FFlogs and Tomestone aren't something that stays at the individual level, aren't something that's kept in private as it is literally publicly available websites tracking data and activity for every player in the game. Furthermore, anybody can upload data obtained in the game about another player without them knowing, and without their consent. I am not writing this from a legal point of view, but from a consistency point of view. If you think that third parties can be infringing upon others in a bad way, then I want you to take a cold, hard look at those types of websites and data aggregators, that while they may provide a lot of useful information at a statistical level or for self improvement, they also collect data about other players without their consent and are usually widely used to dismiss or outright harass others.

Note: the point of the thread is not to take down and burn the websites, thank you.

[Catwho]

used to dismiss or outright harass others

And when that happens, it becomes a reportable offense, just like any other form of in game harassment.

If you try to join a party finder and someone says "no thanks gray parser" - that's a GM worthy comment.

SE can't do anything about that conversation happening on Discord, but if it happens in the game? It's a rule violation just like slapping your Mare code in an adventurer plate.

[Johners]

I certainly think Tomestone and FF Logs should be opt-in, instead of the current opt-out system. I'm not too bothered about the data tomestone collects regarding mount acquisition, for example, as many of those items come from alternative sources. Although we're yet to have an equivalent of WoW Classic's /spit moment against people using a cash store mount. It wouldn't be a big ask for Square Enix to force these websites into becoming opt-in for combat-specific data.

There's certainly game design issues around combat anaylsis that really aught to be improved in 2025. No, the duty recorder is not a good enough feature. Just take a page from WoW's book and provide a feature to save the battle log to a plain text file. At the very least this means no third-party tool is needed to collect that data. Analysing is another story but at the same time, the ToS is already setup to protect people from being abused and harassed.

I will say that Yoshi-P's Disappointed Dad stance on the broader topic is not only unhelpful but also negative for the game. By avoiding conflict and not enforcing the existing terms of service, they've effectively created second-class citizens out of anybody that either chooses not to mod or simply can't on their preferred platform.

[LegendWait]

Did you bring your complains to FFlogs or tomestone?

[TomsYoungerBro]

Did you bring your complains to FFlogs or tomestone?

Unironically a fair point, specifically with the addition of tomestone. The progress bar on that site is used quite a bit to try and weed out prog liars in PF.

[Oizen]

I certainly think Tomestone and FF Logs should be opt-in, instead of the current opt-out system. I'm not too bothered about the data tomestone collects regarding mount acquisition, for example, as many of those items come from alternative sources. Although we're yet to have an equivalent of WoW Classic's /spit moment against people using a cash store mount. It wouldn't be a big ask for Square Enix to force these websites into becoming opt-in for combat-specific data.

There's certainly game design issues around combat anaylsis that really aught to be improved in 2025. No, the duty recorder is not a good enough feature. Just take a page from WoW's book and provide a feature to save the battle log to a plain text file. At the very least this means no third-party tool is needed to collect that data. Analysing is another story but at the same time, the ToS is already setup to protect people from being abused and harassed.

I will say that Yoshi-P's Disappointed Dad stance on the broader topic is not only unhelpful but also negative for the game. By avoiding conflict and not enforcing the existing terms of service, they've effectively created second-class citizens out of anybody that either chooses not to mod or simply can't on their preferred platform.

They can't be opt-in. If they were they'd be a free list of players who break the ToS lol

[Avoidy]

I feel like the game's descending sub count and (probably) lower mogstation sales as a result, caused some shareholder to demand an explanation/scapegoat, and so they blamed the biggest mod on their radar, issued a C&D, and called it a day. Then people got pissed and began review bombing them on Steam, so they drafted this long winded letter to try and appease folks and provide these weird "definitely not profit driven" motives, and act like they were just out here doin' it for some sensitive raider that doesn't exist. And of course the ideological inconsistencies are full on display: like OP mentioned, if player feelings, character tracking, and forcing people to partake in something they don't want are such a big deal, then yeah, there should be an fflogs discussion. But there won't be, because none of those things actually matter to anyone. At the end of the day, fflogs keeps the competitive ones playing, and there's no way to argue that it negatively impacts the cash shop, so even though it intersects with a lot of the problems mentioned in that dev letter, it won't be touched or discussed.

Just think about it from a profit motive. They're a company, after all. Once you look at it from a moneymaking standpoint, the inconsistencies in logic fade away and everything stops seeming so disjointed and confusing. Like, they literally killed a thing people used to enjoy outfits together, and then dropped a cash shop sale a week later, lol. They're not interested in raider feelings; they just want your money and feel like they haven't gotten enough of it lately. Even in that same letter, he hints at "toooootally not wanting to raise sub rates," but that they will have to if revenue is down and then subtly blames mods for it lol. Legit, people can waste time arguing about what he "really" meant all they want, but I'd bet you $20 that the C&D was reactionary and all of this is just more reactionary damage control.

[Aravell]

They can't be opt-in. If they were they'd be a free list of players who break the ToS lol

They can easily make the site opt-in if they don't display the names of anyone. The data will still be the same, people can still look up any of their team's rotational/fight issues with the timeline when they upload a log and people can also go look at the top damage in any job and copy their rotation to improve their own damage.

The only people that would be affected by no names being displayed would be the people who like seeing their name on rank 1 or people who want to bash people by looking up their logs. Both far out of the scope of "self-improvement tool" that people tout the tool to be.

[Oizen]

They can easily make the site opt-in if they don't display the names of anyone. The data will still be the same, people can still look up any of their team's rotational/fight issues with the timeline when they upload a log and people can also go look at the top damage in any job and copy their rotation to improve their own damage.

The only people that would be affected by no names being displayed would be the people who like seeing their name on rank 1 or people who want to bash people by looking up their logs. Both far out of the scope of "self-improvement tool" that people tout the tool to be.

Because it was never meant to be for self improvement. Thats just the defense.

[caffe_macchiato]

Square Enix will also take no action against third-party cheat tools. FFXIV’s version of DBM is very common these days in content, and many people like this. And unlike WoW, our DBM can fully automate all content. But that’s not how the game was intended to be played. People complain that content is too easy due to their cheat tools, which means content is made harder. It absolutely affects the game design. But we know that Square Enix is stretched too thin. CBU3 is working on the FF Tactics remaster along with some other games. Square Enix does not have a good leadership structure. It’s unlikely that the Mare forks will get C&Ds either.

Square Enix needs to be acquired by Sony or some other company (not Microsoft). But the Japanese economy is so bad these days that no one wants to buy it. At this point, just accept that FFXIV is a cheater’s MMO and treat it accordingly.