Integrity matters

[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

[Turtledeluxe]

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

The character, who was allegedly asking players to produce materials with animal abuse in it, also ran a Final Fantasy XIV Beastiary.

[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.

[Aidorouge]

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.

Yep, it ain't just NSFW mods that people got arrogant about. Pretty sure the world racers getting caught cheating happened around the same time as the billboard that always gets brought up, and people are so assured of no consequences about plugins that people openly name ACT and its related websites, even going so far as to claim they're "practically essential now" despite parsers creating as much "gatekeeping" as Mare ever did.

It's never been JUST the gooners that no longer have the fear of god in them about getting banned over mods, it's every corner of the modding scene.
+++

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.

Personal experiences will also vary. I've seen plenty of "18+" PF listings, but I've never encountered anyone wanting to invite me to a syncshell or sending tells for ERP. The "worst" sexually charged experience I've had was some Au Ra or Elezen male (I couldn't tell which, they were tall and had a horned helmet on) that came up behind me while I was using the market board and used some emote that made them cheer/roar where the animation made it look like they were humping up into me.

Didn't need a mod, didn't need to say anything, and I still got "molested" in public, and it wasn't even on Crystal. I was on Aether I think to shop for something that was cheapest there because Universalis said so. Hey, speaking of "openly discussed websites that everyone knows works solely because of third party tools" I wonder why more people don't demand that place get shut down? Or any of the other various tracking websites? Hmm...

[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?

[Aidorouge]

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?

Aye, and it goes to show some of the nuance of mod usage because there's also the weather and fishing tracking websites too. I think Eureka (and maybe all Field Operations) also rely on a plugin of some kind for hunting FATEs, oh and I suppose S mark hunting in the overworld too. If all mod bad, then do we just rely on wikis and personal timers to keep track of all these things? Do people just have to manually visit every world to find the best deals?

I know someone will say these are "quality of life" mods and therefore not subject to the same scrutiny as cheating and gooning mods, but there's been people in the past who have straight-up called color blind and bloom reduction mods "an unfair advantage" so some people have a definite "kill 'em all" approach to mods, and an anti-cheat isn't going to make a nuanced distinction either about what any third-party tool is doing even if its actually beneficial and truly harmless.

[caffe_macchiato]

trying to witchhunt people over something the lead dev declared fine is obvious harassment and hence can be reported for bans, right?

FFXIV is doing so well right now. So using cheats, mods, and running a brothel are perfectly fine, but reposting the TOS verbatim is a bannable offense.

No wonder WoW has 10x the player count that we do. What happened to this game and its community?

[VanillaWafer]

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?

I'll tell you one thing: I have never, ever experienced any of this. No one has even bothered to talk to me like that, which is fine by me since I generally keep to myself anyway.

But once again, I'd ask you to be careful with making sweeping claims about the community. I understand that you're sharing your opinion and your experiences, but statements like “everyone else plays the game this way” make it sound like your experience represents the community as a whole.

And honestly, I don't think that's really contributing to the OP's topic in the way you think it is.

[Ankhira]

Naoki Yoshida - Regarding Mod Usage and Culture

Yet, here you said:

There’s two versions of the game, one in Japan centered around gameplay and what the developers intended.

You love contradicting yourself, don't you? You can't say "Japan centered around gameplay and what the developers intended" then post a quote of the actual Japanese game director saying what he said. Yeah you're cooked, I can't with you, you just want to argue and move goalposts and contradict yourself to seem right, I can't anymore

The fact that you don't even notice your own contradictions and hypocrisy is actually impressive