Integrity matters

[Ankhira]

Final Fantasy XIV in the West is like a 90’s anime that got butchered in localization. There’s two versions of the game, one in Japan centered around gameplay and what the developers intended. Then there’s the American version which throws all of that out for sex and dirty mod roleplay. You join an FC, they want you in the syncshell. You friend someone, they want your sync code. You idle in a city, someone will /tell you for sexual favors. You look in party finder, there’s nothing but sex ads. The gameplay is here, but no one actually cares. The few who do are all using bots and plugins. Our version of the game is very, very different. And you can’t escape it, because everyone else plays the game this way.

When can we get the old FFXIV back?

You do understand modders and the actual developers/localization team are... completely different people and at odds... right? You do understand that the modders are breaking ToS and doing something that's not allowed by either the devs or localization team...? Nobody is giving them an "Okay, feel free to do it."

Don't pretend Japan is this saint region when they love editing pictures of their WoL to have huge melons and posting them on X just as much as the western audience does.

[Solowing]

I don't think it was hijacked by a movement as such...

It's always been there, the only difference is that it -- Like everything else has surfaced a lot more to the general communities due to Sqaure Enix' inability to effectively moderate their own game, and the community realizing that they can get away with it. You basically see it with everything from general plugin talk, to botting/automation, to the more 'degenerate' stuff.

These behaviors exist in most games (bar the modding side), the only difference is that a lot of those games have effective moderation, so it is kept to more closed communities, rather than openly exposed like it is here. Even here, it's mostly performative moderation.

I agree with your sentiment, it was allowed to run wild and now pc players are effectively playing on a parallel universe youre aware of but cant see. , but it's more than that. It's the validation and victim culture that now permeates the game. How objectivity was traded for subjectivity

You've been here pretty much just as long as I have. The culture was never like this. but it morphed into a compliance culture.

[SkankyRoe]

Generalizing an entire player base because of a group of bad actors is certainly a choice. A very insulting one at that. Condemn the individuals responsible not millions of unrelated players.

I'd say it goes beyond "very insulting" given the nature of the generalization, it's just flat out dangerous and really despicable. It's fine to be against mods and plugins, but it's absolutely wrong to generalize everyone who uses them as sexual predators.

[CCheshire]

ARR is 18+ content believe it or not, a lot of quests, sentences and swearing. It's made for adults. Every other expansion tried to tone that down but the core element has stayed on. Houses, RP, all of that incentivizes people for stuff.

Modders came and found out that it's easy to change the game, so they started doing finicky things.
FFXIV is so far the only erp game that people want to play because no others come close to the quality of this one for erp matters. That's it. That's the main reason besides others.

Also NFSW in this game is indeed a huge profit and why stolen assets from square are treated now as a gold mine. People create their own stuff with stolen goods and call it a day with a tag price of "25 bucks for this animation". People buy it, hundreds upon hundreds and square loses money because of this. But it's their fault for tolerating this.

Nobody should be paying for this content but yet again people vote with their wallets.

Some modders have made so much money from ffxiv nfsw scene that they can buy a house in merely a span of a year. That's how badly it has become.

It's fine to be against paid modders for FFXIV, but a lot of other PC single-player games also have a huge NSFW mods esp on Nexus mods like Skyrim and folks have been ripping models and adding nude mods are always out in day 1 of them. Also, there's a huge difference from random MSQ or side quest which are all VN-like with text alone, with actual NFSW animations or images too which CB3 has never done either.

Honestly, from what I read that SL is a better market for paid mods and custom content since the only activity you can do are social like RP, nightclubs, chatting, housing deco and taking photos and there's no need to clear the MSQ to unlock zones or side content either.

[Turtledeluxe]

I think it goes without saying when people refer to prevalence or saying things in general about a community that they aren't arguing its 100% of the people. I will also say I don't expect everyone to highlight the cases as a qualifier when you're talking about what is despicable and what isn't. But it is especially notable in this situation that people are attempting to deflect culpability here when they don't really know what they're talking about and labeling things despicable, in comparison to such egregious potentialities.

Under the assumption the cases reviewed are credible, the game has acted as a funnel for illegal behavior

Absent specific details, we can only guess what players did in game beyond chat. As such, the argument for causation remains weak at most.

We can, however claim that a permissive environment was formed based on the developer's statements regarding third party plugins/mods. I know one of the two cases I reviewed did form in a modding community.

Statement --- > Policy ----> Plugins ---> Communities

Any *normal* company would make a statement about this assuming credible and extreme incidents of this nature. Generally if something hits collectively 1 million views on the internet and seem credible especially. Contrary to players downplaying crimes over their personal enjoyment of being a dom on Balmung (or whatever you're doing), this is a very normal thing, and we know this from looking at Roblox, for example.

The only difference between this situation and Roblox as far as I know is one of visibility, scale and awareness. However, given the passage of time, it's fairly reasonable to assume that these three factors will increase, rather than decrease. It's also worth noting that Roblox was found to be issuing settlements long before it became the public fanfare that it is today.

Player responses to this subject remain questionable and troubling.

[Solowing]

I'd say it goes beyond "very insulting" given the nature of the generalization, it's just flat out dangerous and really despicable. It's fine to be against mods and plugins, but it's absolutely wrong to generalize everyone who uses them as sexual predators.

Woah woah wait wait wait, I remember you for a long time ago. Before they shut the thread down. You were defending the name Daddy's Milk. Bro your name activated me like the winter soldier.. I remember it cause it I laughed so hard I cried.

You had blue base fur with purple or pink stripes at the time.

I saw your post, looked at your name, looked at your character, and thought "I know what you are" lol

[caffe_macchiato]

Nobody is giving them an "Okay, feel free to do it."

That being said, if players continue to uphold the above premise of mods enhancing one's personal enjoyment of the game and acknowledge that they are taking responsibility for what they download, I personally see no reason to track down or investigate gamers for the general use of mods.

Naoki Yoshida - Regarding Mod Usage and Culture

[Carighan]

I'd say it goes beyond "very insulting" given the nature of the generalization, it's just flat out dangerous and really despicable. It's fine to be against mods and plugins, but it's absolutely wrong to generalize everyone who uses them as sexual predators.

And since sexual predation is a crime, accusing someone of it can be seen as libel (assuming forum posts don't count as slander, but same difference). But caffe loves to do that.

Naoki Yoshida - Regarding Mod Usage and Culture

That doesn't actually refute what you replied to, you ought to have read that. You seem to have a general problem with not being able to quite parse the language of the posts you reply to, so maybe this is just a langauge barrier thing?

(BTW even if your erroneous understanding of the post you linked to were true, that'd also automatically shut down the entire thread, no? Devs explicitly fine with all non-legal matters, case closed, go home, trying to witchhunt people over something the lead dev declared fine is obvious harassment and hence can be reported for bans, right? But again, that's not even what the post says. And I don't think you're interested in understanding it in the first place, you're just continously trolling with your weird "Ha I quoted a few words out of context, gotchaaaaaa"-comments)

[AngryLion]

They should fight against bots harder. Need a good cheat detection.

[VeyaAkemi]

Oh Universalis is a fun one, it is actually entirely reliant on XIVLauncher/Dalamud, you see, it has a setting that is on by default where every time someone checks an item on MB with Dalamud on, it will anonymously upload the data from that item in that server to Universalis, technically any number of applications could use use XIVAPI to upload data to Universalis, but even if something else does it, it would still be a third party tool, so it's a moot point, and Dalamud is the most broadly adopted application that has this function anyhow.

This means two things:

1) People using such programs can intentionally check the marketboard after putting things for sale so the data of their items is uploaded and they sell faster.

2) Anyone who has ever used Universalis even once has benefited from third party tools, it doesn't matter which platform you are running the game on.

Fun stuff, ain't it?