Final Fantasy 14 director tackles the hopeless task of trying to get MMO players to uninstall UI mods

pcgamer.com:

Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker was released six months ago, wrapping up the game's decade-long story arc, and fans are desperate to know where director Naoki Yoshida and the team will take the world next. This month's patch 6.1 is laying the groundwork for that, and introducing more bits of endgame content for players.

As with pretty much every big MMOG ever, there are a bunch of third-party tools and mods that experienced players make use of. When I got back into WoW for a brief period around Shadowlands, and I am not any kind of veteran, I probably spent about two hours fiddling with UI, inventory and map mods before taking a single step. They're so ubiquitous in these games that they just feel like part of the scenery.

Hold that thought, because here comes Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida to say, no, these things are Bad Actually. 

In a new blogpost Yoshida writes: «With the release of Patch 6.11 and Dragonsong’s Reprise (Ultimate), we’ve heard concerns from players about the use of third-party tools and the potential for game server emulation. I’ve touched on these topics previously in LIVE Letters, but I would like to take this opportunity to formally address them.»

Yoshida normally comes across as quite a jolly figure, a wine and cookies kinda guy. But he's in a very stern mood here and also says we're not to share «excerpts of this text out of context»!

The post begins with a reminder that FFXIV's terms-of-service state «the use of third-party tools is strictly prohibited. Players who are determined to be using third-party tools will have their accounts suspended, or permanently banned for repeat offenses.»

Yoshida says that players have asked the dev team to define what tools are and are not permissible: but