In Final Fantasy XIV last week, the World First race for the kill of the new Ultimate raid “The Omega Protocol” took place. Now, one team has defeated the bosses, but they are only met with ridicule and scorn.
This is Omega: Ultimate raids are considered the toughest type of PvE content in FFXIV. They have an extremely fast combat pace, require precise execution of mechanics from players, and high DPS. Basically, they are mastered by only a very small percentage of FFXIV players.
The Omega Protocol is the latest Ultimate raid, which went online on January 24. With the launch, the race for the first kill also started, as is often the case in MMORPGs. The boss fight consists of a total of 6 phases, featuring different incarnations of Omega and elaborate mechanics.
The race for Ultimate raids is always a big event in FFXIV. Normally, the MMORPG climbs into the top 5 of the most-watched games in the Twitch charts during the first progression days. When the Japanese team “Unnamed” posted a screenshot of their kill on January 30, everyone initially assumed that the race was over.
“Is this the ban list?”
This is what happened: A short time after Unnamed posted their kill screenshot, a video appeared on YouTube showing the viewpoint of one of their players. In the video, you can see the team attempting to solve one of the later mechanics of the fight while using cheats:
- Zoom Hack, which allows for better visibility of the battlefield by zooming out.
- Hitbox Pixel Cheat, which shows the actual hitbox of the characters
- Cooldown Tracker of other players and more.
Such third-party tools are prohibited according to the terms of use of FFXIV. Since the MMORPG does not have an anti-cheat system, it does not stop players from using such tools on a large scale.
These reactions are there: The video quickly spread in the FFXIV community and led to much ridicule and scorn towards the “winners” of the World First race. A wave of memes, in which players mocked the team, flooded reddit and social media.
Even in the game itself, there was a lot of ridicule. In the raid group search, absurd descriptions appeared on some servers in FFXIV: Omega groups that promised progression from phase 6 required players to use the “JP Satellite Strat”. Thus, the Japanese strategy of cheating.
“Hacks and cheats have been used from the start”
This is what the team says: In a statement, the leader of team Unnamed admitted that all members used Zoom Hack and other “assistance tools” to achieve victory. He justified the act by saying that he had exchanged ideas with other World Progression teams and got the impression that everyone was using cheats.
The use of the tools was ordered by one of the support members of the team, who do not play in the group themselves but assist in analyzing and solving mechanics. The Dragoon of the group, whose gameplay is shown in the video, reportedly did not originally use any tools, according to the statement.
Aside from the outrage and mockery, there are also many voices regarding the incident that say Unnamed only did what everyone else does. The use of cheats and hacks is widespread in FFXIV and is practiced by countless teams. Even if some of them are considered “less problematic”, they are factually prohibited.
On reddit, a user reported with a anonymous disposable account, who claims to be a former professional World First raider. He says:
Hacks and plugins have been used from the start in world races. People who believe that UNNAMED is the only team that uses them are naive and do not understand how widespread usage is. And those who think that it’s “only” zoom hacks underestimate how much these tools can actually do for you. Speed hacks, teleport hacks, no preparation time on spells, think up something and it’s probably already been implemented.
[…] None of us want to do this, but since it’s so easy to develop and use these tools, they are used to create the same conditions for everyone. […] Even if the raiding community agreed not to use them, you can never guarantee that an unknown (or even known) team isn’t secretly using them and winning.
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The reddit user also says that it makes no sense to demand clear videos and streams as evidence because there are enough ways to hide the cheats in the footage. Team Unnamed was simply unlucky to get caught.
The director of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, has previously stated that his team does not plan to implement an anti-cheat. Whether his stance will change after the incident remains to be seen.
However, it is also rather unlikely that an anti-cheat would actually help. Developers have been fighting cheaters in their games for years, but in many cases, the effort is in vain.
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