Can you justify cheating in a poorly designed game?

[cdgreg]

I'll see your Valley Stream and raise you a Brightwaters, NY.

I have no idea where you dudes are, but good old Rochester, NY here.

[Katoke]

I have no idea where you dudes are, but good old Rochester, NY here.

Hah, I went to school upstate, near Binghampton

[Nattack]

Nattajerk
23
North of North Dakota
not casual, i guess
4-10 hours, depending on free time, working hours, blood alcohol content

Used windower specifically so i could look up information while i play, the level of study you need beforehand in this game is astounding. And i like to goin prepared. I would also like to address spellcast. both because writing macros is slow and cumbersome, and flawed in that you get 6 or 8 lines? but there are 16 gear slots, its impractical, and its probably only due to the original game not expecting people to swap gear, but then and now we have learned that some gear sets that square has laden for us are just sub par compared to what we could be. In the end, adding macro slots of at least 17 lines would probably alleviate the frustration we all had on consoles - i do remember having multiple macro slots for one set of gear, making me hit 3 buttons to WS, and two more to TP.

theres also the slowness of the UI, i need convenience or im just prone to become frustrated.

as far as botting goes, i dont agree with it, i lump it, apradar, or anything that can show the pop time of a mob, autoclaim it, etc, buying gil is all attributed to laziness. i understand the motive, we want to get things done as quickly as possible, but that means everyone has to follow that example just to get somehing they want, the legitament players get nothing. SEs design caters to Apradar specifically, those things are so annoying to claim without it, they say their distance but never stay still long enough to give an accurate reading. so an apradar comes along and 1/1 sits on hm'zdei while i, the player who is not using it and am playing within ffxis rules, loses.

buying gil ive always found to be lazy but harmless im a way, ive never had the will for virtual currency, except one dumb move 11 years ago buying trag'ouls set on diablo 2 off a friend for 10bux. these days especially, since gil is so easy to get, why bother? a little work goes a long way. but to each their own, i hold it in the same light as xbox live subscriptions. "why?"

its an old game, and squares first (and consequently best) foray into the mmo world, it wasnt going to be perfect, so windower made it playable, look better, and more user friendly.

the rest is unnecessary, but for fair play we all need to jump on the wagon

[Vandole]

Name: Jason
Age: 20
Location: Mississippi
Play-style: When i played, i was hardcore.
Average time spent playing: 4-12 hours a session.

Some general talking points:

What do you consider cheating in a video game?

botting, RMT, speed/movement/invuln/aimbots. pretty much everything but windower and mappy is cheating.

Do you think a cheater is the same as a griefer? Why or why not?

No. griefers aren't using any tools. they are either excessively trolling or just a douche that is a whinybaby afk. proper trolling is hilarious and tbh im a gigantic griefer. it's kind of difficult being matched up with random people in games if you're almost always the most skilled. i'll never afk ragebaby though.

If you could make a scale with one end being the worst kind of cheating, ranging to the not as bad cheating, where would you place things?

-infinity: windower
-999: claim bots if everyone is doing it anyway.

real cheating: RMT
realer cheating: pos hacking
realest realio: claiming shit when you're the only one with mr.argus

RMTing as cheating, either buying or selling?

selling? Nah. i did that shit. specifically put it into a fund to pay for my booze in college(which ran out 4 months ago. lasted 2 years!)

[Banigayru]

Name : Jeff
Age : 25
Location: Albany, NY; Sacramento, CA
Playstyle: Definately hardcore back in the day, now pretty casual
Average time playing: A year or two more ago, 8-20 hours a day, now anywhere from 2-6 depending on stuff.

Coming from Cerberus, home of the ffxi bots, I think I've seen it all. Starting from editing out darters in 2004-5, to trying to figure out how to use MrArgus when all the buttons were just ???s. I remember back when sea was first out, I used pos to jump over the wall in north sea and go to where temenos is now, It was a place called au haut obelisk or something, there's probably a ss of it on some old ass sea thread here. Camped every king daily for probably the better part of 5-6 years. Now that abyssea has changed the game, I really just only use radar, fish bot and craft bot, but sometimes good old claim bot is nice for camping shit for empyreans. Cheating has become so much a part of the game now, that I couldn't see myself not doing it at this point. Not having the convienences of certain features just makes the game tedious in some respects, maybe it's because I'm loosing interest in the game. Things changed a lot i this game, I remember playing with Maury before he made ffxitool, and kaces back when he was a nooblet monk. Those days were the best for most people, but times change.

[dejet]

Hah, I went to school upstate, near Binghampton

Almost went to school there lol.


Sent from my THUNDERBOLT(I wifi tether this 4G all day)

[Apelila]

Some general talking points:
What do you consider cheating in a video game?
Do you think a cheater is the same as a griefer? Why or why not?
If you could make a scale with one end being the worst kind of cheating, ranging to the not as bad cheating, where would you place things?
RMTing as cheating, either buying or selling.

Some talking points I considered:
Salvage duping
AV wall of justice and other glitching involved.
Gil guping.
Windower.
Botting.
POS Hacking.

Name: Josh
Age: 28
Location: Texas
Play-style: Casual, but lately dammit i've been doing 8+ hour shifts in the damn thing.
Average time spent playing: 3+ hours a day since 2005. Oh it hurts to write that.

The thread title amuses me. Its a bit of a self reinforcing statement. Any game with poorly designed rules usually gets either adjustments made to the rules by the players, or people stop playing it. When adjustments are made, most people will either circumvent, omit, or break rules trying and tweak them towards the elements which are enjoyable.

I'm using board games as the base refernece but the logic still applies. In games which are PVE sometimes so many players ignore or circument the rule that its changed or removed all together in an official release. Then there are games which people compete with each other. I'm sure people here have played with someone who introduces a 'house rule' that gives someone a ridiculously unfair advantage, or know someone there's one dickhead who will refuse to play unless all the rules are followed to the letter.

How this relates to FFXI.

Lets say, 30% of the games population uses windower. Personally, at this stage in the game I'd say i'm grossly underestimating the number. In this thread alone theres no one who's said 'omg you all are cheating and i'm telling'. On the official forums..no idea. I don't read Allah 2.1. But I'd say that just with 30% of your player base saying they could not play the game without the basic features provided by windower not in the PC version (alt tab, HQ screenshots, Tparty, recast, light luggage autosort, yarnball) you have potential for a better design. PS2 isn't really an issue, they could have designed the PC client to be better than it is. The icon for buffs could flash before they're about to wear off. The players have stepped up, and most of the plugins for windower could be implemented without taking away from the ingame experience. The fact that some of the features from windower have been folded into the game (lolwindowed official, light luggage) go to show that the functionality is not without merit to more than a small population of the palyerbase.

Distance, apradar, and spellcast all fall under cheats, but cheating the game not other players. 2 years into the game I knew by sight the distance to stand on WHM to avoid AOE but still cure. I still can mostly. These remove a bit of the challenge from the game, be it directly by letting players avoid pitfals (distance), letting players bypass environment challenges (apradar) or indirectly by taking automating certain functions letting some players function at a higher level than others (Spell cast). Only one of these has the potential to affect other players (apradar) and only in instances where there is competition for claim.

Which is what a majority of what people use cheats in FFXI for - be it speed hacking/craft botting/claim botting- is to are due to competition from other players. Each can be gilded to appear not so harsh, but all of them affect other players, if not all the time.

As for UI modifications outside of windower -
PS2 players have to accept the limits of being unable to edit the files that make up their client. PC players, we don't have to. Some of XI's 'flaws' are as simple as changing the colors of icons in the client. But the ability to change the settings on one system don't mean that both are the same. Is this a cheat? Fuck no, its people playing on an inferior system and having to accept those limits. Suck it PS2 users, you're whats going to kill the game eventually.

[Kaelan?]

Edit: Didn't see the followup question on last page. Added tags so the post doesn't look like a giant wall of text.

@OP:

Spoiler: show

23
Redmond, WA
Used to be pretty hardcore, fairly casual now
Used to do 6-8 a day, pretty much every day. Now, about 3-5 hours/day, about 3 or so days a week.

Some general talking points:
What do you consider cheating in a video game?
Do you think a cheater is the same as a griefer? Why or why not?
If you could make a scale with one end being the worst kind of cheating, ranging to the not as bad cheating, where would you place things?
RMTing as cheating, either buying or selling.

1. Anything explicitly prohibited by the people providing the game or any services associated with the game. Anything that circumvents the game rules to do something unintented by whoever created the game. Taking advantages of bugs within the game code to do something unintented by the designers. If the game has some kind of Terms of Service, or something similar, anything that violates that. Use common sense, this is fairly straightforward. I don't see how it's hard to tell what's cheating and what's not at all.

2. Griefing is playing a game to cause other people as much emotional distress as possible. It has nothing to do with cheating, and is usually completely within the bounds of the game. It might be extremely lame, and it being possible at all is usually a sign of shitty design, but it's not cheating.

3. Honestly, I don't care whether anyone cheats, or how often or in what way, as long as it doesn't negatively affect me. If it ruins the economy (i.e. gil farmers), messes with the game balance and forces me to deal with things I shouldn't have to (i.e. Botting claims), I don't like it. If it either doesn't change my gameplay at all (i.e. other people using Windower) or actually improves it to the detriment of nobody (i.e. TParty), then I'm perfectly fine with it.

I don't think a scale is useful. There's only two kinds of cheating as far as I'm concerned: things that prevent other people from enjoying the game and should be punished, and things that either don't affect others or actually improve things without hurting anyone or breaking the game in some meaningful way, which should be left alone. I can't think of anything that doesn't fall in one of these two categories.

4. RMT is against the ToS you agree to before playing the game in any sensible MMO, so yes it's cheating. I don't really care about the RMT itself, but it always comes with other things, like gil farmers who tend to ruin the economy, and those are a problem.

Some talking points I considered:
Salvage duping
AV wall of justice and other glitching involved.
Gil duping.
Windower.
Botting.
POS Hacking.

All of the above is cheating. Not all of it is harmful, and Windower in particular is generally useful. Editing the game's UI files involve figuring out the game's proprietary data format which I'm fairly sure violates some fine print somewhere in the ToS. I don't particularly care about whether anyone does that or not, and there isn't really any good reason for SE to do anything about it (other than keep notes on "things people want that our newer MMO(s) should probably have"), but it's still a form of cheating.

@Second post

Spoiler: show

To bring up some other thins aside from cheating, what other features in the game do you find poorly designed? Examples like lack of stats in the equipment menu, distance not being included, time stamp, etc. What are some flaws you see with the systems in place, like in the UI, battle, quests, etc.

Oh man...I could go on forever on this one. Lemme see, off the top of my head:

1. I think anything in the game which requires you to stop playing the game and go check some outside source just to use properly is poorly designed.

I shouldn't have to figure out how much my stats contribute to damage/accuracy/whatever else, the game should just tell me. I shouldn't need to figure out that there is a haste cap (and that it's not base-100, so the item percentage displays are always wrong), or what the hell "Enhances XYZ" actually does, or how MAB+8 affects my damage compared to INT+23. The game should always be clear about what all this crap means. There should be tooltips, pop-ups, and some kind of encyclopedia-like detailed description of all this for you to look up. There shouldn't be any hidden stats, and you should be able to have some way of easily comparing different gear setups for whatever you're doing. People shouldn't have to damn near reverse engineer the entire combat system just to figure out if sword A is better than sword B.

Obviously there are some limits to this, like the amount of work it would be to put together something like a wiki (with monster/area/map/item/etc. information) in-game. And other issues, like how leaving certain things blank for the players to fill can help build a community through wikis and major discussion forums. But you should still be able to have some kind of balance between these, like having an in-engine wiki that's cross-referenced in an official wiki website which players just get to fill on their own. The bulk of the work is done by the players, but you don't have to go off to another computer or play in windowed mode anymore just to look something up. Allowing people to embed this kind of thing in the game with user-created UI add-ons would also go a long way. It would be even better if developers were allowed (but not required), to edit or clarify entries, with dev accounts.

2. The functionality provided by most of the standard windower plugins. TParty and Distance are fairly obvious ones, but stuff like Spellcast and what not is great too. This is another example of something I don't necessarily think needed to have been in there from the start; they should have just planned to have some easy method of letting people add these as necessary. Again, the idea of user-created UI addons would have been huge. Windower and all it's plugins could essentially have been just standard user-created content had they provided people with the tools to do that.

3. I know this game was designed back in the days of Everquest and Ultima Online, so to an extent I can see why it might have made more sense then, but having people competing for a chance to fight something is a really shitty design idea. The difficulty should be in killing something, not in getting the opportunity to fight it at all.

4. I still think it's a shitty convention MMOs have to kill big mobs with large groups, then split the drops between the groups, forcing people to compete for shit they've already earned, because there isn't enough to go around for everyone in the group. You just proved you can kill the damn mob, you shouldn't end up coming out with zero reward because you were forced to compete with someone else in your own party (and often linkshell). You're in a group, the game should be encouraging you to help each other. I don't know what the best solution to this would be, but the current way of handling this is pretty bad.

One way of fixing this would just be having client-side drops, which is what Vindictus does (and what Diablo 3 will do, once it's released). You can then get into a situation where people keep getting "the wrong drop" (i.e. the mob drops item A and B, you want B but get A, I want A but get B and we can't trade because they're Rare/EX), but that's easily fixable by having people be able to trade their drops with others in the party/ally before letting them drop to your inventory, through something like the existing loot screen. Adjust drop amounts/rates accordingly.

Another possibility is more point systems like Einherjar and Limbus. You kill shit, you get points, you trade your points for drops. Cooperation instead of competition and has the advantage of being consistent, as you no longer have to deal with random drop rates. You could say this makes individual fights less meaningful (since everything you kill gives some kind of points you trade in), but that's also easily remedied by having specific drops require Key Items obtained as 100% drops off specific kills, in addition to however many points it requires to purchase. A tier system like the Abyssea trophies would also work.

5. While I love the dudeHUGE number of quests XI has, it's also really shitty at giving quest rewards. It would be nice if there was a wider variety of things (useful things) available as rewards, whether it be EXP, merit points, permanent stat increases or whatever else. You rarely ever see gear rewards and if there ever is any, it's either AF or terribad. Doesn't matter as much in higher levels, but earlier in the game it would be a lot more new-player-friendly to hand out decent gear as an alternative to camping shit like Hoo Mjuu the Torrent. Would also be nice to have an incentive to do some of the cool, obscure content hidden away in various parts of the game instead of always grinding all the time.

6. Titles have always been pretty pointless. It would be nice if they actually did something, so you had a reason to collect them. The atmas that require old NM kills are sort of nice, but there's a limit to what you can do with those, they don't apply to all the titles you've ever gotten, only a few big ones and obviously they're useless outside abyssea (or inside when you're not using them). Vindictus just gives out titles as quest rewards, as well as for doing random misc things (like killing 10 spiders by stepping on them, or killing a boss by kicking it), and they all have small permanent stat increases assigned to them. They're all relatively small amounts, so you don't feel like you're ever required to get them to be a decent player, but if you go out of your way to get a bunch, they do add up eventually. It gives you some motivation to actively try to play title pokemon and KETCHUM' ALL (which makes people play the game for longer, thus making it a net win for SE, too).

There's other stuff in the game I'd change if I could - like the way merits work (I think they're way too weak and too few), and NPC adventuring fellows (what I wouldn't do for XI fellows with XII's gambit system as their AI) - but those aren't necessarily poorly designed, they're just good things that could be better.

/armchair gaem designer

[Tagus]

Name: Jim
Age: 33
Location: Chicago
Play-style: Moderate
Average time spent playing: 4-6 hours per day, 4-6 days per week

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to add to this, as it's been a few days since the thread was updated, but my mindset on this has evolved a bit on this and I felt compelled to say something. I used to be hardcore straight-edge with ffxi. Never once used windower, botted, duped anything, or even knew how. I used to rage against the RMT like an idiot on these forums. Now, and I recognize that this is going to sound awesomely dumb, but the simple fact that it is true necessitates the mentioning of it... after leveling BLM on Galka solo, my mindset about alot of things has changed. It... changed me. I think that particular experience has brought about the realization that any shortcut you can get away with is worth trying, as long as you're willing to accept the risk. I still don't cheat necessarily, but I get it. Some hoops are not worth jumping through for a game that provides little to no tangible value to a person's life beyond entertainment.

[Delzhu]

I agree that if you don't like the rules, don't play the game. Games have rules for reasons. If you sit down and start playing monopoly and become that douche that steals from the bank and takes all the cards and doesn't abide by the rules, the game loses all meaning. Games are NOTHING without rules. If you break them, you are defeating the purpose. I wouldn't invite you to play Monopoly with me, and I wouldn't invite you to my party, and Square Enix wouldn't invite you to play their game. Cheating is wrong.

[Despain]

Name: Despain
Age: 20
Hard-core for the first 2-3 years, semi-casual in between, extremely casual last year of playing
Spent 7 years of my life playing this game, and I don't regret it.

I've cheated like a mother fucker on this game, except the only thing I refrained from doing was buying gil, as I never had a reason to. I had a 2nd account I'd have running FFXI-APP/Wizbot with THF main just farming while I dual boxed my main account and played normally. I made about 2-3mil a day literally doing nothing.

Since I was in front of my computer screen most of the time, it was easy to just alt-tab to see if anything out of the ordinary was going on. Every time I heard "incoming tell", I'd alt-tab and respond like usual.

I was in a pretty bad linkshell on Pandemonium called Death Row which ran a packet bot, though I forgot the name (wasn't Arenz, it was the other one). Botting has always been second nature, however I didn't always bot. In the beginning (2-3 years), I did play 100% legit. I had a knack for being able to claim NMs with relative ease and was dubbed the NM King on Pandemonium when I was really serious about it. Whenever I camped Deggi/Domi before their drops were made rare/ex, I'd exploit other bots techniques to insure I'd always get claim.

The way this would work is a RMT would have a bot out usually ontop of the mini bridge in each of the NM's rooms. Whenever one of the NMs popped, the bot would start moving sporadically. At this time I'd pop Flee and start running the way it decides to start running without stopping. Whenever I camped, bots never claimed. I'd usually get out claimed by a random wandering player. Honestly, camping NMs was extremely fun. The adrenaline rush could not be beat. Even simple things like Valkurm Emperor whenever I'd camp it for friends was a thrill. I really do miss this part of Final Fantasy and I'd do anything to have it back.

Towards the end of my days, I used windower and Wizbot (for reasons stated above). I started selling gil to people funding relics when I was in Nirvana in Pandemonium/Asura. I had no desire to play the game any longer and tried to make as much money as I possibly could off of it (it helped me make a down payment on a new car, pay off credit card bills, and put a huge dent in my student loans). Then when it was all said and done, I sold my FFXI account and called it a day.

Is cheating bad? No. Work smarter, not harder.

[Hirronimus]

I agree with what some of the people said. You should not need to do math in order to figure simple things such as what your Ranged Attack is or how much Evasion you have. Any and all character information should always be available to user at a moment's notice.

It's hard for me to say if GUI is poorly designed as I have become so used to it I don't really notice problems with it. You adapt and move on. Yes, I've used Windower to tweak and adjust macros and icons, as I'm sure many have here, but in all honesty it, and I'm not defending or justifying use of windower here. What windower provides should have been given to us in GUI or upgraded as time went on.

Selling characters. Hmm, is that considered poor game design? Guess that's 1 beneficial flaw that helped me out a few times.

[Hirronimus]

I agree that if you don't like the rules, don't play the game. Games have rules for reasons. If you sit down and start playing monopoly and become that douche that steals from the bank and takes all the cards and doesn't abide by the rules, the game loses all meaning. Games are NOTHING without rules. If you break them, you are defeating the purpose. I wouldn't invite you to play Monopoly with me, and I wouldn't invite you to my party, and Square Enix wouldn't invite you to play their game. Cheating is wrong.

Tbh, and I'm not saying this for arguments sake, rules are what makes the game. It's your choice if you abide by them or not. You can call person a cheater if they don't follow them, I'll call them ingenious. Think of it this way. If you had a way to defy gravity, would you do it?

[Delzhu]

Exactly, rules are what make the game. What is *insert sport here* if people just run around randomly doing whatever they want? It's nothing, it's just people eating shit. Breaking the rules defeats the purpose of the game, it doesn't make you ingenious. Being the monopoly thief makes you an idiot, not a genius. Any braindead bimbo can see the bank is there and it can be taken. Physics isn't a game, so defying gravity is completely different. Gravity is a law, not a rule.

[bungiefan]

But what is the purpose of this game? To have fun within the limits of what you can do? To complete the storyline? Cheating doesn't always devalue those. I'm not done with any single storyline after 9 years of having my account, and I'd like any way to do it faster without having to find people that want to do it at the same time as me with my akward time zone. Having a wiki and an external minimap makes it much easier to do those, and as I'm going solo and not really getting expensive items that way, I'm not affecting other players' enjoyment.

[FailureMidgard]

Since this kinda got bumped, felt I'd add an essay or something!

First off, cheating is really vague, as is obvious viewing this thread. In the end, I feel that cheating basically comes down to anything that undermines what would otherwise be an accomplishment. Yes, I'm talking about an accomplishment in a game. Just like it can be an accomplishment to win a soccer game, it can be an accomplishment to beat XYZ boss, obtain XYZ item, etc in a video game. Essentially, I'm saying that the ends justify the means as far as cheating is concerned. Example:

Flee hacking to kite a mob that moves at flee speed while killing it is cheating.
Flee hacking because you were out at dinner and needed to get to Ein so your LS didn't have to wait for you is not cheating. In fact - this is a failing of FFXI in my opinion. The goal of the game developers should be to let you play the game. If they want to have a few "Travel puzzles" here and there (Parradamo Tor), I'm cool with that. But adding insanely long runs to get to remote locations just so you can then actually play the game is kinda shitty, in my personal opinion. WoW for example went the opposite direction of this. You can teleport directly to instances you want to do. You can summon other players to you, etc. It's like they want you to play the game rather than spend a ton of time traveling (though they generally have ways/reasons to make you travel there once and see the world still - which is good).

This can extend further. RMTing for example. I feel buying gil is border-line cheating (that being said, if you are so poor you can't afford shihei/food/spells...I support buying a small bit of gil and not grind it). Buying hundreds of millions to then get a relic just doesn't seem "right". On the other hand selling gil is more like reverse cheating (handicapping?), and while it may help cheaters out, "cheating" is most definitely a misnomer.

Past this definition though, things such as LGM, windower, and ja0wait come into question. This is where the poor game development is brought into question. Player collision is stupid unless you design the game only for small numbers (Portal-2 Co-op, player collision is ok). When you have bullshit like 25 person dynamis, it's not fun, it accomplishes nothing, and it should not exist. There's obviously no way to justify anything here, as people's opinions will vary - but I think when the game is poorly designed, it is ok to circumvent it's design. Allowing alt-tab, parsing to figure out how the game works, being able to see a numerical distance and not guess, have instant abilities actually be instant (without having to add a gear-swap that does NOTHING), not running into your 24 allies, being able to swap gear in a game that wants you to swap gear, etc. These are short-comings of the game. Basically, it comes down to QoL issues (Quality of Life). Bypassing them is not cheating, and every game has some sort of QoL issues, though they are more prevalent and larger issues in some games.

As for specific encounters/strategies. I feel this is a failing of FFXI, and I think any WoW player would agree with me. Encounters should be designed to be beatable, even if they are hard. Furthermore, it shouldn't take 400x the effort to get a popset as it does to fight the NM. This is where WoW went correctly - some fights can be very difficult, most players don't beat a majority of the content - but you can sit there and try it over and over and over in a night. There's none of this nonese to get a PW or AV pop, then have a mere 2 hrs to fight it. Seeing hundreds of manhours go to waste encourages people to cheat to not see all those hours lost to a single mistake. Really, the challenge should be in the fight, not in the metagame. Anyway, as such, I feel that all the AV strategies to date (including the current kill-method of which I was one of the first to do) are essentially cheating, but the design of this game encourages it. I feel that brew killing anything is essentially cheating too (though I do it, again, it's encouraged, why waste my time when I don't have to). I feel that when a fight is put into the game, it should be looked at as a challenge or a puzzle for the players to work through and overcome. Making the mob unable to fight back cause it's stuck on a wall, or because you are immune to it and do 20% of its hp per hit, or because the UI bugs out while you are immune to everything it does is all the same - it's just wasting the developers time in creating the fight at all. They may as well have just made a big punching bag, or a box you open to get your shinies. If the fight is circumvented or avoided in the manner it was intended to be fought (yaya, more vague stuff), it's cheating. That being said, the FFXI developers really don't know what they are doing, and XI is beyond broken, so I feel this may not even apply to this game anymore - it has it's own really odd and twisted way of doing things, and the developers/GMs are too cheap or too uncaring to even prevent the cheating that does occur. They have their own arbitrary ruleset, yet they don't enforce it worth shit.

As for what I've personally done - sold gil, claim botted (I don't feel this should exist as an issue - shortcoming of the game, but as I said, I want to play the game, not stand around doing nothing or running places, this is merely a tool to do that), used LGM/j0, used clipper lightly (paranoid of over-using it, but if it's safe, meh...what value is gained in running to Fei'yin legit for the 200th time?).

Mike, 27, Tulsa OK, I dunno what to classify myself as anymore, I guess hardcore more than casual, but still some bits of casual in my outlook and playstyle.

inb4 "TLDR I hate your posts stop writing so much!"

but, TLDR: The game should be fun, convenient, and encourage you actually playing and having fun when you sit down. Anything that just lets you play the game is not cheating in my mind. Anything that would undermine an achievement for you is definitely cheating. Something that lets you play the game while lowering others' chances of playing the game is a huge fucking fail on SE's part (claimbot). That being said, I do like competition, but I feel that WoW's progress/etc (or pvp) is a far better form of competition than fighting to get to fight.

[Alderaan]

Seeing hundreds of manhours go to waste encourages people to cheat to not see all those hours lost to a single mistake. Really, the challenge should be in the fight, not in the metagame.

I fear that the majority won't or don't want to understand this.

I've always wondered how many players would have quit sooner had the thrill of cheating not kept them hooked. On the flip side, how many players would have stayed had the game been built properly.

[Konda]

Name: Peter
Age: 22
Location: UK
Play-style: varies between hardcore and casual, depending on RL
Average time spent playing: anything from 0-12hrs a day. basically when i have free time

used: Windower since I first learned about it's existance, apradar(mainly for vnms and hagunENM), spellcast (very recently started using)

The reason for using windower is simple: I have a PC, and a game that has huge stretches of doing nothing except waiting. It's unfathomable how SE expect you to not to use your PC and internet connection for anything except play ffxi, its completely pointless and defies all logic.

I remember back in 2004 or whenever, not long after I'd started playing. One day I logged on at 5pm after school, immediatly put flag up and sat waiting for a party for 5 hours, then since I had to go to bed at 12pm back then, I logged off since it was pointless partying for ~90mins when it took 30mins to get to camp. During this time, there wasn't anyone on the Linkshell, I was only level 24 or so, so I couldnt farm or solo very well, especially out of jeuno. I went to bed with such a sour taste in my mouth and didnt play for over a week. I'd wasted a good 5 hours of my life. completely wasted. That's not what I want from a game, and I can't see how anyone else would want it from a game.
I later found out about windower and have never looked back.

Windower (and it's basic plugins) essentially makes FFXI into the game it would be if SE were any good at their job.
can your platform support double resolution and further clipping plane? yes?>here you go
what's that? you need more macro lines? >here you go
you want to be able to use your computer for other things without logging off? >here you go
you want to know how long until your JA is ready again? >here you go
etc

Apradar is a gray area imo. I don't use it for camping NMs, but for things like hagun ENM, it was definatly cheating. however, as a map/position browser, there's no reason why there can't be something like that included in the game.

Spellcast is also a gray area imo. you could do it all with the basic FFXI, but you'd need to pause time to type all the commands into the text box. it saves a huge amount of time and effort once set up and allows your charactor to perform to it's best. 90% of the game is using the right equipment at the right time.

@botting
I can see people's reasoning for botting kings. The system sucks, no matter how you look at it. I can kind of see their reasoning behind the system and wanting to make the big scary monsters rare, but their methods were beyond bad. Botting something which only appears once every 21-24hrs was inevitable and I can't blame people for not wanting to sit in an area for 3 hours to get outclaimed and have 3 hours of their life wasted.

It sucks being on the recieving end of it, and I can't ever say it's not cheating, but I at the same time I can't blame people for doing it. Luckilly, I didn't do that much of kings and didn't suffer too heavilly to bots when I did.

I think we can all agree that elements of FFXI are terrible. 3rd party apps basically make the game better in the eyes of their developer/user. If it actually makes the game better or not and how much of an edge it gives users defines it's position on the "cheat-o-graph".
botting against other botters? not cheating so much as levelling the playing field.
botting against ps2 players? cheating.

[bungiefan]

ApRadar and Mappy are also great for navigating to places. You can have a full live map on a second screen, that doesn't get broken like DAT mods do when an update happens. You can make notes on the maps. It's an active FFXI-Atlas.

[Defile]

Name: Phil
Age: 29
Location: Ohio
Play-style: I've done it all. Now I'm just a burden on my friends.
Average time spent playing: 4hrs once a week as my wife and I agreed. *wip crack*

I started playing as cop came out. I lvled SMN as my first job on PS2 wich looking back I can say it fucking sucked. But even back then I used a turbo controller to cap my lolsummoning magic. Ive done it all as well. With extremely limited time now a days I just can't bring myself to farm Gil or farm anything for that matter. When my I get on it's go time. I'm going to experience the conclusion of ffxi. Even if I have to buy it out right. I need LGM ;;

I'm sorry for my shotty grammar, spelling, and pointlessness.