Today we’re discussing the problem with using 3rd party tools in FFXIV to make challenging content easier, this time around with FFXIV Veteran Brian from @Work To Game.
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#FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV # Addons
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There's nothing quite like two wholesome grandpas talking about MMOs
consider what will go away if you ban ALL add-ons: machinima like /emote, live RP stageplays that use chatbubbles, top-tier gposing, videoessays and other similar content made by bellular or pint that use gshade, bard concerts, and other tons of community made content that helped bring in and keep tons of casual players over the years. don't just think about combat and ACT. the game is more than that.
addons are not the same as crap like dbm and stuff like that. most are super simple QoL things that just make really tiny changes to everything OUTSIDE of raiding.
The most useful one I ever saw was a simple info thing at the top of my screen that told me what music was currently playing. That was it. BETTER BAN ME R.I.P
The only thing FFXI "needs" is to be put out of its misery.
The simple UI tweaks are just QoL that fix issues SE has not addressed yet.
Let's not conflate that with things like cactbot and triggers or even worse things that have a more direct impact at combat.
Having a fps or ping counter is not cheating.
What I find more concerning is that after years of overlooking, with the understanding that if your not a shit head about it your fine, they just bust out the ban hammer right away. That's messed up. Yesterday no one cared, today your in jail.
If you decide to actually start enforcing the rules, give the poor Bastards a warning at least.
FFXIV has the best out of box experience for an MMORPG so addons aren't necessary and if anything, they are a crutch that allows the devs to avoid making crucial updates.
If anything, we need to rally behind getting some of these features added to the game and unlike most games, the devs of FFXIV actually listen. It may take a while to implement but they'll make changes if that's what the community wants.
When it comes to damage meters, I'm against them because I've been in MMOs where they've built the game around damage, healing and energy meters and they breed a level of level of toxicity. They also create a larger barrier to entry for new players and a level of animosity between players of different levels.
Yoshi P has made it clear that he understands this and he'll never add damage/healing meters but if he were to add them, the best way is to make them an extension of the combat log, have it only be personal logs and it only activates when entering/exiting combat and when entering/exiting an instance.
Also, the term with hunt is being used wrong here. A witch hunt implies that there's nothing to be found because witches arent real. If people are getting banned because they're breaking the ToS, its not a witch hunt, its just a hunt.
Ginger Prime is yet again wrong. Gshade it’s fine SE said “Utilizing such a tool would not violate any agreements customers have with Square Enix, and we don't plan on doing anything to restrict users from accessing it.
However, we advise that players use this at their own risk. Square Enix does not regulate the content of the aforementioned add-on and will not be responsible for any damage or losses resulting from its use.”
I'd like to think this is a very black and white situation. Just don't use addons, right?
But frankly I'd rather that Square just keep the addon scene on eggshells so they don't go off the deep end like in WoW than going on a witch hunt. Never again do I want to be descriminated against for not tweaking my client just to play the game like I was in WoW.
Edit: Actually, after hearing the video. No. Bug off. Ban all addons, no mercy. Improve? Kill the boss. It's not a bloody speedrun. If you are doing the mechanics right, the boss dies. Simple as.
I think people do not know the difference between addons, mods and plugins. Yes, they are all forbidden, but some of them do not change the difficulty of the game or to help you clear content. Mods? Those are visuals (body, items). Addons? Its mostly the UI that the player see. Plugins? its the program that could change the game entirely (from chat bubbles, to notifying you about mine nodes, to even compress the skills into 1 button). I totally believe that this witch hunt began when the people reported that raiding player because they were about to clear the Ultimate. The same behavior that a WoW player can have. It is like a freaking competition, but they do not THINK about the consequences.
P.S: In some cases, the mods creator and some of the plugins, made the game better. And because of them, people stood playing the game continuesly. If it was not for those kind of people, players would come, finish the game and be off untill a new expansion or something big.
I really don't mind if people want to run a damage meter and I don't think it should be up to me what level of content I feel someone should "need" a meter on. I think it's fine if it exists and it should absolutely remain "keep it to yourself". It does play an important role in skill improvement at all levels other than running fates.
As far as Gshade, that's not something that should even be considered a mod. It's making changes to your hardware settings and Nvidia control panel or the equivalent. This isn't a stealth based FPS so it really doesn't matter what the game looks like to someone else.
Personally, the only thing that I have that is even remotely combat related is ACT and I might turn it on once a week. I'm guessing the root of the current issue is coming from a group of people that had a favorite team out there that wasn't going to win so they started going after their opponents for plugin use.
If you can't improve without ACT you're very odd. You don't need it to improve.
As far as I'm aware no one relevant to the race actually cheated.
UI mods are against ToS but not cheating.
No game is 100% for everyone. ever. My husband and I are both gamers, but while we play some games together – FFXIV, but there are games I play that he doesn't play and vice versa. So yeah….. LOVED this discussion btw.
EAC can be really taxing on your system. Ffxiv does not have massive requirements so implementing EAC can really hurt alot of those people with lower end systems (and i guarantee you , there is alot of em)
Good to hear these two great guys come together for a serious discussion. Would like to see them talk together again for something more fun in the future.
Here is the overlying problem that is going to come from this, and it shows in the guy who got put in "jail" for using ACT. People are going to start going through streamers and even if the streamers is only using UI stuff (i.e. materia ui or g-shade) they will mass report and have the person banned. THAT is the real issue. Not the use of them but people reporting out of spite. People are petty as hell. I mean just look at cancel culture. I don't know a single person who uses ACT that uses it in a disrespectful way. Regardless of TOS the issue is going to be people mass reporting just because they can. If people want to use cactpot (or however you spell it) let them. Just dont acknowledge them in the world first if they use it. It is just that simple. Period. If they aren't using it to be rude but only for themselves, what is the issue? This has not been a big issue like this in a long time until now. Has it been an issue? Yes because again people are fickle. BUT not to the issue that some one streaming gets banned for the sake of having said addons. If YOU don't want to use them, then don't. Regardless of TOS, and I iterate even more, LET PEOPLE BE UNLESS THEY ARE BEING RUDE OR USING IT TO CHEAT in things like PVP (i.e. guaranteed crits/auto limit break/speed hacks). Jiminy cricket people are so damn, again, fickle. I am done. I will not be responding to this post after this.
99% using those parser tools are: Damage not good, get out. Only 1% knows how to use the data to analyze the reason and drag out plan for improvement. That's the reality.
If meta gaming was mostly comprised of the 1%, it is a real thing. But 99% are like, 'you don't have that specific cookie cutter, you get out!' and this kind of behavior bashes out sheer number of casual players who actually are supporting the game. At least FFXIV didn't reach extreme toxic state such as WoW. Maybe, although it looks a bit draconic, blocking out addons altogether is the most efficient way at this moment.
By the way, I cannot play FFXIV due to schedule and commitment to match.. which is impossible at this time of my life. Playing FFXIV just for the storyline (which is actually far far far ** 100 better than many other non-MMOs) is another way to play the game. You have simply no need to worry about 3rd party crap this way and I hope the game stays this way, unlike WoW.
ps. God damn it, I need to finish up the Cinder Drift, still!
More points to check up:
1. Is it really a competition? Clearing the Savage Raid? Is there any commercial league or something exists?
2. Why do you need to weight on completion? Why not label "Completion without any add-ons" separately?
You technically don't even need a.c.t. to see your own improvement of your job. All it does is give you a more direct way of seeing it. You can use land, sea, sky to get used to your rotation and master your skill usage, but no one really wants to spend an hour smacking a dummy to iron out their own rotation to the point of absolute certainty. Taking it to the raids themselves just has higher needs of knowing not only your job but the jobs of your party. This is harder if you're progging with pf. The higher the tier of raiding, the more you'll need to know how to utilize the most out of what other jobs bring to the party, be it offensive buffs, defensive buffs, or skills that provide extra utility/resource for the job's kit. One good example is the use of 3rd eye for sam. 10 kenki might not sound impressive, but you can make a good use out of it with the amount of times you can use it and the kenki you get from it. If you use 3rd eye 10 times, then that's 100 kenki for 4 extra shintens in the raid.
The main thing that I think the devs should look into is that they need to make it so raids don't solely revolve around dps checks and just party damage in general. The game gives some jobs some utility skills that really don't see any use that could make some interesting mechanics in the game.
Gsgade its illegal? 🙁
YoshiP says all addons/3rd party tools are prohibited. That's it. It's not a suggestion. It's not a request. It's a rule. Period. End of discussion. They make the rules. Not the players. Some players need to understand that.
There's no gray area. There's no ambiguity. There's no "wiggle room". There's no "But I just want a prettier UI". There's no "but I need to know how much damage I'm doing…". There's no "the UI doesn't provide all the info I think it should". It doesn't matter. Rules are rules, and you agree to abide those rules when you login.
Ignore the rules, get caught and you're suspended? Don't whine about it being "unfair". You knew what you were doing. You took the risk and you were duly punished.
Similarly, streamers flaunting addons they KNOW full well are prohibited are digging their own hole too. There's no sympathy for them if they get suspended.
You also have to blame a modding community that has been pushing and pushing and pushing to see just how much they can get away with.
This wouldn't have blown up this way if some public streamers hadn't decided that they were above the law and streamed their use of the more egregious stuff live. The devs tried to treat us like adults and say if you're gonna use it be discreet, and some people just couldn't help themselves because their ego mattered more.
As the lodestone post mentions, they have a priority list of add ons/mods that they consider to be worse than others. I think it's a safe bet that things like gshade and chat bubbles and those kind of non-intrusive ui tweaks are pretty low on that list. So low that they probably get "forgotten" when compared to things like cactpot and the add ons that actually trivialise the gameplay, hence why you're incredibly unlikely to see someone banned just for using gshade.
I feel like a post-combat analyzer (and I feel likt it should be delayed by 8 hours or so to make it more difficult to use against people) which was anonymized for everyone except you would be useful. For some other things, they should be evaluated too, and then agressively enforce the terms.
Great discussion you guys! And one we needed! If Yoshi P has a team that can beat the Ultimates, then there's no need for add-ons that circumvent the mechanics. G-shade and ACT basic are fine because they don't do that.
Love these two. Glad they finally collabed. I've been on console so I've never had the luxury of these addons. The people getting caught deserve it because they have been warned for years. People took advantage of Yoshi-p's kindness. I've gotten through content fine. I get the self-improvement bit but the problem is only there if you make it there. I made it through endwalker with no materia (because I forgot) and I've been fine. The struggle was there but I improved myself when I needed to. People really need to just get back to, actually, playing the game.
Due to fact TPS never streamed their clears, everytime they took first people claimed they cheated to the best of my knowledge.
Honestly like Ruri, I loved the fact I didn't need DBM to clear raids in 14. I use g-shade, and I use ACT for the same reasons Brian does. I do know though that I can grey parse and clear a savage, so I do not worry it as much.
I am very much in agreement, if you are streaming, and using the add–ons, expect to be caught and punished. Always been, do not talk about it, just like we do not talk about bruno. Using them on stream is like filming a tik tok of you murdering someone, and posting it. You're gonna get caught.
One big problem with what Brian wants in regards to adding in XIVanalysis is that sometimes what's optimal is figured out by the players and what the players determined to be optimal is better than what the developers found out (this happened with NIN when it first came out as an example). So, basing an XIVanalysis on just what the devs know could lead to errors in the analysis.
But, as others have pointed out, Stone, Sky, Sea will tell you how you're doing and there's a site that if you put in the dummy and the time remaining, it will tell you your DPS. Now, that's not the same as doing it in the actual fight with mechanics happening, but it's something that already exists that people can make use of right now.
For savage, my best buddy is..
Sea, sky,stone area!!
If i can beat that dummy with 20 second left, then my dmg is right, my gear is ready, and my rotation is oke.
Glad i spent time training at that place.
"You don't NEED X" Is a terrible argument.
Honestly, no matter what you're arguing about, never use it.
Like you can go full stupid with this argument and you're technically never wrong.
"You don't NEED in-game chat. Just name your characters your email address and people can email you if they wanna talk to you!"
"You don't NEED to see your action bars. Just learn your rotation and keep track of your CDs mentally!"
Everyone has different preferences and abilities.
By completely banning all mods square enix is saying they can make a "one size fits all" style UI and that's never gonna happen.
There's a reason why "one size fits all" were changed to be called "one size fits most."
Is FFXIV's UI passable? Yes.
Is WoW's UI passable? Barely.
Do both have massive grounds for improvement? Absolutely!