A few days ago, one of the most popular mods for Final Fantasy XIV was shut down. In his statement, the head of the game said that mods must not negatively affect the gaming experience of other players in the MMORPG. Now the community is discussing the damage meters of the game.
What are FFlogs and Tomestone? FFlogs is a third-party tool for Final Fantasy XIV, a so-called damage meter. It runs in the background while the MMORPG is being played and reads the combat log data of the game. It analyzes how much damage, healing, and other performance each player in the group generates.
On the FFlogs website, the collected data can be accessed. Endgame raiders can use the tool to check how they performed compared to other players in specific fights. It can also help identify one’s own sources of error and improve.
The Tomestone website, on the other hand, is a site where Final Fantasy XIV players can upload and analyze their FFlog data. Here, the progress of the individual player in challenging content such as raids or ultimates is primarily displayed.
Both tools do not directly interfere with the gameplay. In the official forum, players are now discussing them nonetheless: Both tools are data monsters and can negatively impact teamwork.
Kicked for poor performance? That’s what the community is discussing
What is concerning the community? In the forum post, players bring up a few central points that are on their minds. Foremost is the discontent that the rules for mods and third-party tools are not being consistently enforced.
In his statement regarding the mod on the Lodestone, Naoki Yoshida states that modded endgame gear could demotivate endgame raiders. Thread starter Valence adds that visual mods do not negatively impact the game itself. However, FFlogs and Tomestone: They are not visual mods and don’t modify games files directly, but they certainly do have a wide spread impact over the whole game and community, and some sides that I can safely say, are clearly negative and infringing upon others.
Both sides read the data of all characters involved in the fight. Thus, only one person per group needs to track. Even if one does not use FFlogs, one’s performance is publicly accessible on the Internet.
Some players then use this to check which randoms
from the group search they will take into their next raid and which they will not. Players can thus be excluded from current content based on data not always collected by themselves. This can lead to comments-less kicks from the group, but also to uncomfortable inquiries about why they are not performing well.
FFlogs and Tomestone are therefore great tools for high-end raiders to measure and improve their performance. However, they can also lead to discontent within the player base.
At the same time, players in the forum thread criticize that FFlogs and Tomestone use the opt-out and not the opt-in principle. Those who do not want to be tracked must take action themselves and subsequently hide their data. Players Johners (FFXIV Forum Page 1) and Batbrat (FFXIV Forum Page 2), among others, are particularly critical of this.
If mods and third-party tools, as Naoki Yoshida said, are not supposed to negatively affect teammates, players question for the aforementioned reasons why FFlogs or Tomestone should not also be shut down.
Damage meters are cool if they’re not abused, says our author
I have been playing Final Fantasy XIV since 2016. As of October 2025, I will have been playing for nine years. I have worked my way through the story and as a completionist, I always try to unlock and complete all the content that is offered to me.
However, I stay away from the hard versions of raids or ultimates. I usually play late at night after work and am no longer focused enough to perform at the level I expect from myself in high-end content.
Nevertheless, I enjoy tackling the current hard challenges with my friends: During the Stormblood era, we conquered The Minstrel’s Ballad: Tsukuyomi’s Pain
together, and recently we attempted The Minstrel’s Ballad: Sphene’s Burden
from Dawntrail.
Some in my group like to run FFlogs in the background – announced, of course. So my character has an entry on the page, which I don’t really need.
Since I rarely go into content with strangers from the group search, I have never been rejected
because I might not be as good as a raid leader would like. However, during Shadowbringers, when we were farming the mount from The Dancing Plague (Extreme)
, I got scolded because of that.
After the umpteenth attempt, the mount dropped, and by random assignment, it was given to me. This did not sit well with a teammate we had found via the group search to fill the party: He wrote it was obvious that the worst group member gets the mount
in the chat and left the group.
Was that bad? No. Was it uncomfortable? Yes.
Because for me personally, it was a pretty good run: I had mastered all the mechanics, stood in all the right positions, didn’t end up lying dead on the ground longer than Dragoons usually do, and I also had a lot of fun. I had also been looking forward to the mount until that moment. Afterward, I questioned whether I really deserved it.
Precisely because I usually only go into content with my friends, who know what to expect from me, something like that happens to me very rarely.
But I can imagine it being more than uncomfortable if that happens to you often. Or if you want to improve and cannot enter content because you are kicked directly. Some people are also not always nice in their communication and can clearly and sometimes even rudely express why you may not participate.
At the same time, I do see the utility of clear numbers, data, and facts: It is much easier to improve when you can quantify performance. As a data driven person myself, I am absolutely in favor of using such a tool.
As with many things though, I see a limit: I must not start to put down other players for their (in my view) insufficient performance. Especially not when those players may not know that they were tracked at all.
Accordingly, I personally agree with Naoki Yoshida. A mod or third-party tool that only I use for my own measurements? Great! But the fun has a hole from the moment I unintentionally ruin someone else’s day with my tool.
In the end, I can only control myself and must hope that my fellow players are also nice and friendly.
Finally, it is also important to note: Mods and third-party tools are still officially banned in Final Fantasy XIV and are at most tolerated. The use of these is therefore fundamentally a dance on the volcano, which has blown up just like in the case of Mare.
After the banishment of Mare, Naoki Yoshida, the head of Final Fantasy XIV, also spoke out. What he had to say about mods and third-party tools can be read in our news about the statement: Final Fantasy XIV lost one of its largest mods – Now the head of the MMORPG speaks out
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