It's That Time Again!

IIRC, him and his shell got caught duping limbus/salvage gear. Could be wrong, that was like 12 years ago lol

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/68852-R-I-P-Players

You're just talking nonsense really, we've been using windower for over 15 years. Just even using this site is probably against the TOS. This dumb discussion comes up every time these threads are made. Barely anyone plays vanilla so we should all be banned by that logic, by now. Or there are different levels of detection that people are discussing.

The addons is what changed over the years and so have the players playstyle. They have become more comfortable using all kinds of grey area addons. "SE" didn't just decide to change their stance and ban, they have been pretty consistent for what they've banned for with their system. While there is always a chance anything that breaks the ToS can cause a suspension, its incredibly rare and probably not likely if its something benign like windower. Certain addons or ways some are used (like GS) cause a flag that gets people suspended in addition to reports.

Pushing people away from grey area addons and ones known to cause suspensions is the best way to prevent overall bans. You saying "SE can ban for anything that breaks ToS!" really doesn't help anyone at all. Last time this came up people said they didn't want to help those that use "cheats" yet now that someone who supported this game got whacked, others are sad for him.

People share their experiences using x addon or app, so others can avoid a suspension or rely on them less to do the same. There was a period they didn't do crap for years then they switched whatever they have to "On" and whack a few people in a wave to scare others. I don't pretend to know their system 100% but I can imagine any discussion being more helpful than simply repeating all the time "anything that breaks the ToS can be bannable!"

I'm not sure why are triggered when I was just stating fact. I believe the reason why GS isn't banned isn't because it's "okay", but because it's not detectable.

People try to figure out which add on should be banned based on functionality, that's wrong direction to begin with. SE probably doesn't care which add on does what. In fact even the banning process itself is probably automated.

If you really want to use tools, don't leave any evidence. Just don't make assumptions on what's okay and what's not. Everything is not okay based on ToS: it's fact.


I'm not sure why are you comparing Ah.com with using accounts own by SE lol. Can SE even take this site down? But they can do anything with their accounts.

Which is what people were doing, discussing what is detectable as addon usage has changed over the years. Everything is not okay, but we've been using windower for how many years now? What you are saying is basically silly. If that is the case we should all go vanilla now to avoid ban.

I was comparing it because SE has already banned XIV players for using an outside platform to do something that breaks their ToS. People here post videos and screenshots showing themselves using addons/windower so seemed fair to me. By your logic we need to be very afraid and go to vanilla and never post any video or screenshots.

Just very silly when we can just isolate what might cause a detection via addons or certain automation and stop doing it. The creator of one of the most recent addons has already adjusted his addon and impacted the amount of people banned. That is just one example of how these discussions work in favor of players.

A lot are indeed under the assumption that because they are using "okay" addons, they won't get banned. If they know a certain addon has a higher probability to trigger their automated system, they will prolly stop using it.

Huh? I never said people should be "afraid" of doing things that they are sure they won't be caught on. If you are sure about not getting caught, why would you be afraid of it? I was only commenting on Ejiins statement specifically here:


SE has always been very clear about what's bannable and what's not: every addon is bannable. Ejiin made it sound like it's SEs fault that they werent clear, when in fact SE did absolutely nothing wrong here. They just do things that users agree with on ToS. It was player base interpret SEs stance wrong.

even if its fully automated by now there was a time where they had to actively monitor and decide what results in a ban and what doesn't.

spellcast was out pretty early in XIs life cycle back when there were no equipsets and i never heared of anyone getting banned for spellcast/gs.
however, its a bit of a stretch to claim spellcast/gearswap is undetectable when vanilla only had like 6 macro lines and ppl would consistantly send 6+ swaps for each spell and back to idle. if you'd try to do that manually over a longer period of time, human error aside, your hand would fall off from carpal tunnel just a few weeks in.

its a open secret that SE, or MMO companies in general, are more benevolent towards certain 3rd party tools than others. i think blizzard even openly states where exactly it crosses the line, SE completely fails in that regard.

Has FFXI TOS been updated similarly to FFXIV? I imagine that they would have done something the same, where they can use outside evidence against your account to ban you. Plenty of community figures got slapped the *** up by square for one thing or another when only communicating through other mediums rather through any kind of in game exchange.

god the bg salvage ban thread is bringing back memories

Afania, SE has not "always" been clear on what is bannable. I just gave the example earlier with windower. They would have banned 90% of the game population by now if that was the case. They obviously are aware of it and are willing to put up with it. Certain things (in my opinion, automation) are causing red flags to them right now though which is causing this thread etc. Its that type of situation they will have a blind eye to benign things like Windower, and even take addon ideas from them, but when it crosses their "line" they will act (or their automated system.)

I will say tho, they would lose less money if they specifically mentioned what type of activity caused the ban instead of a blanket response. This would force people away from that type of addon or activity in most cases and prevent more bans which causes people to quit and their friends etc.

But they can't, not because windower is okay, but because windower is client side so there's no way to get evidence for a ban.


This is where you interpret SEs stance wrong. If they are okay with windower, they will update their TOS and said "windower is okay" or something similar to it. If ToS is not updated, then it's not okay. It's you people reading it as "okay" incorrectly just because SE didn't(or unable to) act.

Not banning windower =/= their ToS gets changed or removed.

I've never see SE officially announce that windower being the exception to the rule. I know they never act against it, doesn't mean I should be reading it as a "okay" message. It's more of the lack of evidence to ban in the case of windower afaik.


They never make any announcements on change of ToS content, not that I'm aware of. The ToS has always been the same. They may change how they gather evidence, which cause different add on gets banned when it wasn't the case before. But that's more like changing the method rather than changing the content of ToS itself.

This should be an indirect consequence of spark/acc boting...

As there isnt more those dozens obvious cheating bots in ceizak, that means STF has more time to look for non-obvious culprits.

They can't do this because they would lose the ambiguity. The advantage of this is they have a lot of personal leeway in what they can allow or ban. If they say they banned someone because their character looked very slippery while using weaponskills (ja0), then people would just not use ja0 (or quit). But leaving it ambiguous means people will go into some add-on manhunt to make their accounts seem less dubious. It's already working seeing as people are screaming about it on this thread thinking something like Send is somehow this shady add-on.

Spellcast/Gearswap are significantly worse offenders of automation even at the lightest of uses. The fact is if you're using third party apps/tools you can potentially get banned period.

lol, can't believe anyone using anchor is surprised they got banned...

Gearswap is no better than Anchor, it allows you to use multiple pieces of gear to exceed what the developers intended. If you want to rag on one then you have to rag on both.

Gearswap allows you to bypass the choices normal players have to make as to have high cast speed or potency on casts, you get both. The developers know the limitations of teh macro system, if they wanted you to be able to have both they would put both stats on gear.

People are overthinking this, they either get you cause you talk about it or they think people are botting with send if they sent a tell and you don't reply to it on an alt. If you use send make a tell notification system.

If someone has been doing what they are doing for 5-10 years and just get banned this week, it's not cause they just made super cool new tools to detect anything and it's not cause anchor is suddenly an issue when it wasn't the last few years.

I'm not a networking expert so I can be 100% wrong about this. I don't think SE make decisions on what's bannable and what's not based on how game changing the tool is.

If I understand how anchor works correctly, it changes character position on the server side, which makes it easier to detect than GS no? Or maybe someone else that understand how Anchor work can explain better.

SE said "cheat action verified by logs", doesn't mean chat log.

I'm not sure if talking about tools in chat can be used as an evidence. If that's the case then GS users would all be banned already. I think certain tools are riskier because of how server/client handle things.

For anchor, would SE have a script/log where it has list of knockback moves and it checks if players position changes or not and it red flags? not an expert..

But what if a player is behind a wall, how would SE validate that? do they check logs?

You can tell a lot of people are behind the times in these threads when it comes to up to date information based on real experience. GMs don't send tells anymore to determine if you're botting or automating, ask anyone whos been banned to check logs. They do it through other means, most likely automated, and its what made me suspect the automation via various addons/GS that caused his suspension. They probably don't see it any differently than botting.

The reason they gave him was via phone call, some min wage worker reading a script, they don't know a damn thing lol. Neither do the emails tell you any information at all aside from the most generic response of "cheat/bot" which could be literally anything as established earlier that breaks ToS.

GearSwap is an evolution to the micro managing of FF11 equipment system. From a development and advancement perspective to the game, there is absolutely no doubt that if there was a proper development team still present and dedicated, they would have themselves ultimately created the same amazing experience that GearSwap offers to the game. This game heavily revolves around the swap of gear for all situations, it therefore makes sense to have the best possible system to manage this aspect of the game. The comparison between the vanilla equipset/macro system with GearSwap is similar to stone age and modern civilization. Sadly, our beloved game is running on a skeleton crew for many years, and the only hope of further improvements, comes from a dedicated group of people who make addons to enhance the game and make it more fun, while maximizing the potential when it comes to equipment changes, GearSwap. I therefore see it totally justified that GearSwap specifically does way more good to the game than harm (if any).

GearSwap uses packets, SE are very aware when players use it, and the reason they DON'T ban them, is because to demolish one of the biggest improvements done to this game, would be the most foolish decision ever, not because its not detectable!

There are many players, both from the English and Japanese speaking communities, that want to start using GearSwap, because of the amazing things it has to offer. The only hurdle stopping them is the learning curve. There is no doubt that one day when a General User Interface is implemented for GearSwap, majority will make the move, and everyone will have a much better experience playing this game.

Oh, it's absolutely detectable. You're correct in that it doesn't do anything the game client isn't already doing; what's remarkable is the speed and consistency with which it does it. I mean, think about how fast precast/midcast/aftercast happens with modern fastcast values, and how often you do anything that would invoke all three.

I don't know how granular their logging is, or deep their log/trend analysis goes. But "below their threshold to see/care about" is not the same as "they can't see it", and you should always operate within that mindset.

That said, I'm not saying don't use it - I obviously do - I'm just saying that it's not a purely client side action, and isn't 100% without risk.

[Edit: I mis-read your post at first so mine probably reads weirdly now. That said, they did give us something to address


in the form of equipment sets, which as far as I can tell everyone just uses to store 100 lockstyle options]

There are multiple parts that the vanilla client doesn't allow, starting with allowing to WS without being engaged (from what I understand unintended behavior, but left due to popularity), second being able to fractionally change gear on the same action, which the native client just outright cannot do (I'm ok with being wrong here, just show me how).

Report Abuse > It’s harassing me.

Anchor = Vocane Ring +1, Repulse Mantle, Dashing Subligar

It simply ignores the incoming packet for the knockback. Something SE could easily write around, or check/ban if they desired. But unlike swapping gear rapidly, something that is easily seen by others and can be reported.

I had to sit and explain to somebody what I meant by having gearswap select a particular lockstyle on startup, and they kept thinking I meant lock a set of gear. The concept was foreign to them. A lot of people have outright forgotten what equipsets are, or never paid attention to them.

Or maybe it's detectable but tougher to create some kind of bot to hand out the ban automatically?


You are drawing conclusions based on your evaluation of the tool itself lol.

If SE never ban any bot today, I bet people would say something like "the game boring to grind all the CPs. Mobile game these days have automated function so SE wants FFXI to have it too. Thats why bots aren't banned". But that's really drawing conclusions based on what they see, not the other way around.

If what you said about SEs stance is true, they would have at least officially endorse windower, or update ToS to reflect that. It's not uncommon in the gaming industry to allow community developed tools being used no? But SE choose not to do that. So I wouldn't assume anything. Only SE insiders knows how the bans are handled.