MMORPG

Final Fantasy XIV Addon Debacle

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Hey Friends. The last few days have been really weird for the Final Fantasy XIV community, and even though I am not actively playing that game… I still care about what goes down there. It isn’t like at some point I will not return to the fold like I always do. Essentially a sequence of events has started a ball rolling and it has gathered up enough momentum that I am not entirely certain where it will stop. There are a few factors in play, not the least of which is the supposed rampant cheating in the new PVP mode of the game, and reported wide use of third-party utilities during the race for Worlds First in the new Ultimate Raid. Something that should be very clear however is that Square Enix and more specifically Yoshi P and the team have been exceptionally clear over the years that Third Party Tools are strictly prohibited.

What has led to this most recent conflagration is the fact that on May 9th, SE reiterated its stance on banning third-party utilities from the game. This was then followed up by two very public bans of players a North American player (Bagel Goose) and a Japanese player (Hiroro). There is a discussion about this taking place as a result of brigading, however to me personally it sounds like a shot across the bow. The NA/EU communities and the Japanese language communities are pretty separated and if you wanted to get the message across that they mean it “for serious” this time, a banning in each would seem like a tactical play. Whatever the case this has caused the wildest spiral of the community falling in on itself that I have seen in a while. Essentially there are two camps, those who want unfettered access to addons and those who think everyone that publicly uses them should be banned.

I have to admit one of my favorite features of Final Fantasy XIV was its strict prohibition of addons and the fact that they would legitimately ban people from using them. I felt like this added to a more friendly dungeon environment since it took away the penis measuring that came with folks posting damage meters to public chat. It also stopped folks from giving “helpful advice” that they were not carrying their weight and should “git gud”, because those sorts of actions could end up landing you in the Mordion Gaol. It personally made me way more likely to be willing to random roulettes and felt like it was providing a much less toxic dungeon environment overall than those I had experienced in World of Warcraft.

The problem was that over the years that line got a little ragged as to what was allowed and what was prohibited. All of those great Instagram shots that you see from Final Fantasy players composing outrageous screenshots… are for the most part all using third-party addons and at a very minimum Reshade/GShade. The great bards that you hear every night in Limsa Lominsa… are pretty much all using an addon that allows them to feed a musical score and translate them to keypresses. If you don’t like the feel of the UI in Final Fantasy XIV and replace it with something more akin to ElvUI from World of Warcraft, then again that is a third-party addon. There are completely pure and good reasons to be running addons in Final Fantasy XIV, but there are also a number of more nefarious options like CactBot that can give the player DBM-style boss callouts. I am not sure what addon this is but I saw a video of something yesterday that was drawing out where attacks were going to go before the in-game visualization fired.

I think this has more recently reached a head with the influx of World of Warcraft players coming into the Final Fantasy XIV community. In World of Warcraft, I have not run a stock interface since 2005, and it is just accepted as part of playing that game that you are going to need to seek addons to improve its shortcomings. For example, I specifically ran an all-in-one addon replacement called BenikUI which was a fork of ElvUI… which in itself was a fork of TukUI. Addons are just the culture of that game and not running them puts you at a significant disadvantage. As more World of Warcraft players has transferred to Final Fantasy XIV, that mindset and culture have come with them. The problem here is that over the last few years mods have come from something that players did in secret and never talked about, to something being openly shown on streams now. The tentative truce between Square Enix enforcers and the players was broken… as folks started talking about fight club openly.

As Raiding in World of Warcraft has been turned into an E-Sport, the stakes of each new event have been increased as well. There has been an arms race in WoW Raiding and the armaments have been the addons that can give each team a slight advantage in specific encounters. This is so much the case that some of the large raid guilds have an LUA programmer on staff essentially to tweak and update raid call mods between attempts so that their team has an advantage. Blizzard has taken a very light touch over the years when it comes to banning mod behavior. I remember in Burning Crusade I had an addon that would allow me to bind a key so that it would automatically target whoever in the raid had the least health and cast Flash of Light. I used this to spam heal my way to being an effective Paladin raid healer, a class and role that I am very much not well equipped for. Sure, the ability to do this specific thing was removed from the API eventually, but the exceptionally clever addon developers found ways around it. Each time a function has been removed from the libraries, some clever user figures out a way to achieve the same results through a different method.

The casualty of this arms race is that World of Warcraft raid encounters shifted significantly to include more random elements that require the player to react to conditions and take the necessary action for that moment in time. Additionally, so much fire on the ground that you have to avoid to keep from dying a horrible death… I can still hear the awful klaxon of my GTFO addon. The randomness of each encounter made it so that the addons only really gave you so much information, and it required you to still execute based on the information you are getting. Running Deadly Boss Mods became a requirement, but the encounters were also designed in a way that took that assumption into account. If everyone is exploiting the mechanics of the fight, then no one is really gaining an unfair advantage.

The problem comes into play when you realize that Final Fantasy XIV encounters are not designed around the existence of addons. They are designed in a way to be equally competitive to both console players and those players on the PC, and the team has taken great care to ensure this. They also are just functionally different in the way that they play out, because if a World of Warcraft encounter is about controlling chaos… Final Fantasy XIV is about executing a dance routine with the highest possible accuracy. FFXIV bosses are tightly scripted encounters and often so much so that if you have a stopwatch running, the same abilities will be firing at the same moment in relation to some other event every single time. Succeeding in those fights is about memorizing the pattern and executing it flawlessly, and the degree of “wiggle room” decreases each time you step up in encounter difficulty. So that if you are doing Ultimates, the highest content in the game a single mistake by any one of the eight players doing the encounter can mean a wipe for the entire team.

In the escalating arms race of competitive raiding… in Final Fantasy XIV running an addon to give you exact call-outs and draw visualizations on screen is bringing a machine gun to a sword fight. The players not running addons are at a disadvantage so it starts to facilitate the need for EVERYONE to be running addons. Now we get to the situation we find ourselves in today. Square Enix and more specifically Yoshi P and crew do not want addons to be a requirement for playing the game. More importantly, they do not want an entire mode of gameplay, which are console games… to be invalidated for competitive content. I feel like they have allowed things to get into this state with their lax “just don’t talk about it” stance, and the end result is that they are going to start having to ban anyone using addons. The only way to right the ship at this point is to sweep the deck.

Folks are not reacting to this well… and shocking to no one Pyromancer who openly attacked his then World of Warcraft focused community… turns his anger on his now Final Fantasy XIV focused community. This is but one example of what is going on right now in all of the Final Fantasy XIV devoted platforms and admittedly is a more hyperbolic take… but still representative of the faction divide. My stance is the lack of addons is good for Final Fantasy XIV. We did not need them for completing Coil, and I believe the devs when they say that every single Ultimate is capable of being completed without addons as well. Final Fantasy XIV is honestly the first game of its like that I have played happily without addons, because it gave me enough control over my UI and inventory layout that I didn’t feel that I needed them.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/EasyAntiCheat-Logo.png

Essentially we are in this position where I feel that if players do not abandon these addons on their own, Square Enix will step in and solve the problem for us. As a publisher, they are already using Easy Anti Cheat for a number of games, which is absolutely capable of detecting that you are running an addon that is interfacing with the current window either by scanning memory for the executable or by looking for direct x hooks. This is the heavy-handed option, but it is an option that I feel we are on the cusp of having thrust upon us. Square will protect the validity of console gamers at all costs because they make up a huge chunk of the Final Fantasy XIV player base. If you do not want the next step in this evolution to be more DRM installed on top of your favorite game, maybe learn to live without your addons or at a minimum stop showing them on streams.

I think the only way to proceed fairly is that every streamer that can be shown to be using addons publicly, should receive a temporary ban. This is the only way that the point gets driven home. More so the official statement needs to be updated with a much clearer stance because I feel like the original point might be getting lost in translation and the obsessive politeness of this particular game team. World of Warcraft is a failed state, and there is no way back at this point to a time before the addon escalation. Final Fantasy XIV is not beyond saving, but that team is going to have to make some hard choices and take some equally stern actions. They have stated that they want every piece of content completed on all platforms and without addons, and they are going to have to back that intention up with action. I’m sorry Bards and Instagram Models… but yall are going to get damaged in the crossfire.

Bel Goes Mad and Does PVP

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve not put a ton of effort into it but as I get time I have been collecting cats for my home instance, and I noticed in Rata Sum one of them has started hanging out with this random Asura on the roof. I think this is pretty freaking cute and that you all needed this in your lives. There are times when I question who the hell I am anymore. Firstly for so many years I was diametrically opposed to Guild Wars 2, or at the very least I did not understand what people saw in the game. For even longer I have been one of the most anti-PVP people I know in my circle… and what am I doing now? I am dabbling in PVP in Guild Wars 2, and enjoying myself. I legitimately am wondering if I need to find an exorcist.

It all started simple enough with Thalen repeatedly making the comment that we need to find someone into PVP so we can get the reward potions for the guild hall upgrades. At that point, I had been enjoying World vs World in the game for a while, and it planted a thought in my brain. If I can enjoy this game mode where I spend most of my time dead and running back… maybe I can actually enjoy the structured PVP in Guild Wars 2. One of the things that I enjoyed about the siege combat of the battlegrounds is that there really is no negative to it. The deaths don’t incur a cost, and almost any amount of time spent there is rewarding so it is pretty much a win/win situation. Lately, I have been using the rewards tracks to farm up Mystic Clovers, and my extreme need for them also planted the idea of maybe doing the Drizzlewood track in PVP as well.

So for the last several days, I have been on this weird mission to farm as many PVP potions as I could. This has more or less meant doing three of the four PVP dailies each day, with the fourth being inaccessible because I have no interest in joining a tournament and waiting around for it to start. Through sheer happenstance, I have landed on my Ranger as my WvW character and my fledgling Engineer as my PVP character. So each day at reset I do Tequatl, then pop over to Belglory my Engineer and knock out my PVP dailies, then finally land on my Ranger for some WvW dailies. The end result is that on an average day I am knocking out all but two of my dailies in total. Depending on how fast I get through all of this I often end up working on leveling the Engineer that is now I believe 73.

So far in my travels, I have encountered two different modes of play for PVP, the first of which being Stronghold. As far as I can tell there is only one map here called Battle of Champion’s Dusk, with the layout shown above. This is essentially a highly condensed version of Summoner’s Rift from League of Legends, with your objective being to break into the enemy fort at the end of your lane and kill the “Lord”. This is done by summoning “creeps” to borrow the LoL parlance, which travel down the lane and bombs the fortified door. These are summoned through collecting supplies that spawn in the center of the map and are a contested resource. Additionally, there are trebuchets on both sides that are constantly attacking the door, and players can disable these to slow down the progress of the enemy team. It is a perfectly cromulent game mode, but it is far from my favorite.

The mode I would far rather play is Conquest, which is essentially this game’s version of capture the flag or as I am most used to it Control from Destiny 2. There are three objectives that can be held by moving your team members into the circle and waiting for it to capture. Each objective you hold contributes points to your score and the first team to 500 points wins. Each map in the rotation also has some sort of a secondary objective that might be taking down NPCs that spawn at regular intervals for bonus points, or pushing through to an objective and channeling an orb to capture it for your team. I am not sure what it is about this mode but it feels much more simple and as a result more enjoyable. It seems to be way more flexible for random players, whereas Stronghold feels like it needs a fixed strategy and core teamwork. I may also be biased because my dumb turrets build seems to work swimmingly in Conquest and mostly fails in Stronghold.

Friends… I still have no clue who the hell I am anymore. I am championing a game that I resigned from the alpha testing for because I thought it felt awful. Now I am playing a game mode that I have traditionally railed against for breeding toxic players. I mean sure I have run into a few knobs so far in PVP and WvW but for the most part, everyone has been damned chill. I am certain that the toxicity exists, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised to just follow along and do some content. I did run into a commander the other night that was kicking anyone who would not join his Discord, so there was that. However, that has seemingly been the massive exception as opposed to being the norm. With my Necro, I mostly enjoyed taking camps, but with the Ranger, I find I am actually enjoying objective defense.

We need literally multiple hundred PVP potions for upgrades, so I am trying to ignore this and keep plugging away at it. We knocked out several of the other objectives in a similar faction by just contributing a little bit each day, so I figure slow and steady here will also win the race. I think more than anything that is the thing I am enjoying about Guild Wars 2. Progress is measured in weeks and months rather than days… which makes it feel not so crushing when you can’t do a certain thing on a specific day. All of the gearing objectives are working towards a long-tailed objective that isn’t also moving further away from me. Eventually, I will have Legendary items in the game, but I am also in no real rush to get there either, and not having them is not adversely impacting my enjoyment. So far at least it feels like pretty much everything is doable in a good set of starter exotics.

Taweret is Best

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve not really been feeling myself this week. It might be the constant rain or the impending stress of a holiday weekend and juggling visits to three houses. Whatever the case I have felt like going into turtle mode where I pull my head up into my shell. As such most of my gaming of late has been running around on my little Engineer in Guild Wars 2 and working on zone completion for leveling purposes. As of last night, she is 36 and I have at least one trait line fully trained to give me access to all sorts of goodies with my turrets. Engineer is a weird class, and honestly, I think it would be significantly better if the turrets were on shorter cooldowns. Essentially it feels like I can take on anything in the world… if I have my full retinue of mechanical friends, and the rest of the time I feel like a harsh glance could kill me.

The only World Boss that I have been doing on the regular is Tequatl, and of late I have been doing that on my Ranger. I am not sure why the sudden switch in allegiance, but doing Tequatl on a Longbow Ranger is pretty painless and I am mostly just running it for the chance at easy ascended gear. There are a few other bosses that would be probably beneficial to loop in, but it seems like I operate in one of two modes. Either I ride the World Boss train and spend all evening hitting everything, or I do Tequatl at reset and call it good for the rest of the evening. Once I settle into leveling an alt for the night, it is hard to poke my head back out and pay attention to other boss spawns from that point forward even though I get notifications. If I felt better this week I would probably be pushing the main story forward, but a fugue state of leveling my Engineer seems to be what my mind needs right now.

Moon Knight wrapped up and I am extremely happy with the conclusion of the series and where it places the character going forward for season two. The highlight of the series however is Taweret, because those ear wiggles are so damned great. I love the character of Layla and I have all sorts of theories as to how things are going to progress from here. However, I am seeing a lot of people who either were disappointed in the series or considered it generally meh. I’ve been talking to Thalen about this and I think it might be based on how bought into the character of Moon Knight you were going into the show. I was a Marvel kid and as such had encountered Moon Knight countless times… which gave me a firm understanding of which alters we might be seeing during the course of the show. The conclusion really is how I expected things to go down, or more so how it HAD to go down to progress.

Another interesting thing that I am watching now as it releases on YouTube is Mystery Incorporated, a version of Scooby Doo that appears to have taken notes from the modern Archie/Riverdale CW Series. So far it is interesting and very much NOT the slapstick romp that the cartoon is. Right now the only piece that exists is the pilot but it was interesting enough to subscribe to the channel and see where this goes. I’m not likely to get much gaming or media time this weekend, but at some point, there is a whole slew of other things that I want to catch up on. I purposefully waited until the entire Picard series had finished season 2 before checking that out, and then there is Strange New Worlds. I also need to actually sit down and watch my way through Discovery as well. Star Trek is definitely something that I have neglected over the years because while it was something I enjoyed… it was never the cultural touchstone for me that Star Was was.

There we have it… a blog post created. I sorta had to force my way through this one because I was not even sure what I wanted to talk about this morning. However, I did not want to go two days in a row without a post because it felt like I would be sliding down a potentially slippery slope back into going months between writing. Sometimes you just sorta have to brute force your way through it for a bit to keep the words flowing.

Engineers and Arclight

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Good Morning Friends. I had a bit of a rough night and even a bit of rough sleep. After the workday, I just felt drained and had made plans to hang with a friend that I ultimately backed out of. Instead, I wound up crashing on the sofa with my laptop piddling around on my tiny Sylvari Engineer. There is something deeply relaxing about just chilling out and working on map completion and subsequently leveling as a result. There is something about allowing yourself to go with the flow of events and knocking out renown hearts. It is moments like this that make me realize that I changed as a gamer more than the game itself changed. There is a time when this would not have been nearly as compelling as I found it last night, where it would have felt pointless. However, that pointlessness is in part what my brain has latched onto, or more the wide variety of things that I can do… but feel zero pressure to actually do.

This is going to be a bit of an odd post jumping around between topics. I am extremely ready for the finale of Moon Knight, which I realize at the time of writing this… already exists and I could watch it, but obviously have not had a chance to. I have greatly enjoyed this show, and I am wondering if it is because I was already deeply familiar with the character beforehand. I had a conversation the other day with my recently retired former boss, and he is not getting it at all. He said he is holding on to hope that everything will make sense in the end because he is ultimately committed to marvel franchises. However, from the first moments of the show, I am been hooked, in part I guess because I understand that character of Moon Knight is ultimately someone who is deeply fragmented and such an unreliable narrator. I am very interested to see where this character goes and how it interacts with the larger universe.

Another thing that I am really looking forward to is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. What has been lacking with Marvel since Endgame is a broader sense of direction. What made the first sequence of movies work is that it felt like we were building towards something and that there was a larger conflict at play that ultimately came to a head in the Infinity War. We’ve lacked that sense of purpose and forward momentum, and I am feeling like Multiverse of Madness is going to give us that. This is going to be the match that lights the fuse on the next conflict, and I had a conversation with Thalen yesterday and almost agree with him. His current theory is that this is all leading to Secret Wars 2015, or at least a version of that story played out with Kang instead of the Beyonder. I could absolutely see this happening and whatever the case the end results are going to see the version of X-Men from the Animated series merged into the MCU.

Lastly, yesterday was the reveal of the oft-discussed “Warcraft Mobile Game”, and I have to say I am a little disappointed. I think the problem is that for me when someone says “Warcraft” I think “World of” not “Orcs & Humans”. Sure I played the original dos game, was really big into Warcraft II and making “PUDs”… and significantly LAN battles, but that is effectively ancient history at this point and no longer seems relevant. “Warcraft” has meant an MMORPG for the last eighteen years and my brain went to maybe them creating some new mobile MMORPG that took the best bits of WoW and translated them to a new phone experience. That is not what we got, and instead, it looks mostly like a Clash of Clans like game experience focused on the slapstick side of the Warcraft setting similar to Hearthstone.

That is “fine” and I am sure there is an audience for it. It is decidedly not really a game for me, however. I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for the RTS genre, and for me, it sort of felt like an interim format that was ultimately replaced by other sorts of real-time interaction like ARPGs. However there are a lot of people who seem to like Clash of Clans and the other derivatives that have been released over the years, so I fully expect that this is going to follow that format mixed in with a “gacha” system for pulling new heroes to lead your army. I am certain it will make Blizzard money and there are whales out there that will love “pulling” for this game. Mobile games always feel like the free sample that you get at a warehouse store… with the eventual premium price tag being way more than I want to spend on that enjoyment.