Final Fantasy 14 World’s First Raiders Achievement Taken Away, Naoki Yoshida ‘Very Disappointed’

Final Fantasy XIV raid scene has been rocked by controversy (again) after the revelation that the world’s first Japanese raid team to clear Omega Protocol (Ultimate) did so with the help of third-party mods. Added in Omega Protocol patch 6.31 is a super-challenging raid encounter. The use of third-party mods or tools is strictly prohibited in XIV’s hyper-competitive raid scene and expressly in the game’s terms of service.

Naoki Yoshida, creator of XIV and the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI, has a Blog post that “it’s personally very disappointing for me to see this uproar around third-party tools once again in light of what happened with Dragonsong Reprise (Ultimate)”. Dragonsong’s Reprise was a raid added in 6.11, and a similar situation occurred, using unofficial means to clear the team first.

The group in question is known as UNNAMED_. The video was posted on Twitter of the competition, which shows the group using what is known as the zoom hack, a modification that allows the player to move the camera further out than normal, allowing for a better view of the battlefield.

The concept of World First is an unofficial one, basically just bragging rights in a community. Still, Yoshida hinted that this could become a feature in the future, stating that “we hear the community’s voice that an official raid race should be supported, and the rules should be decided on – This is a topic that needs to be discussed internally, so please allow me to keep it as an item for future consideration.”

Third-party mods and tools can be a controversial topic in the MMO space. Not all of these offer obvious advantages, for example, some are used to allow skill rotations for higher level play or to measure the DPS their character is able to deal. Obviously, high-level competitive players will be very interested in knowing.

Such players argue that these tools should be included in the game for everyone to use. Yet, the feeling of platform holders is often that such tools can be used to bully players who are not performing “optimally”, which makes the whole situation difficult.

What do you make of all this matter? Are the third-party mods in question the video game equivalent of doping, or are they tools that should be included in the first place? Race to be the first in the comments section below.