SE to support UI mods for FFXIV

[Loony BoB]

Possibility to open FFXIV up to a moddable UI? - Page 7 (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/8119-Possibility-to-open-FFXIV-up-to-a-moddable-UI?p=107074#post107074)

Interesting. I'm very wary of how far they will allow mods to go, though. I don't like the idea (and it seems most people don't, luckily) of allowing for people to get all sorts of weird things done that basically tell you things that the existing game does not already (there is mention of mods that tell you when to cast what spell etc. depending on what a monster is about to do, something like that).

Of course, for now the general feeling is that this will be for skinning only and not for anything such as that. So yay?

[Jiro]

I saw there was a number of UI mods for XI that didn't do anything too fancy, but just made it a little bit easier to use. Hopefully they restrict it to things like that, otherwise there's the potential for sorts of :bou::bou::bou::bou: to go down.

[Ouch!]

Some of the FFXI UI mods were fantastic, especially for mages. After using user-made UI mods like Recast and Yarnball, playing without them became damn near unbearable.

[Loony BoB]

Did Yarnball make it into a game where you snubbed people if they didn't use Yarnball, and did it handicap people who didn't use it? :( I don't want the game to turn into snobbery.

On another note, although it's not being worked on as far as I can tell immediately, they plan on fixing the Alt+Tab / fullscreen issue.

EDIT: From what I can read about yarnball, it's a timer for buffs etc. - if that's the case, FFXIV already has those in-built so no problems there. :) I like the idea of the chatlog it has, though.

[Ouch!]

The type of plug-ins I used for FFXI, like recast, yarnball, and spellcast were unfair in so far as they gave you an edge over other players. Their entire purpose was to make you more efficient. Spellcast was certainly the most broken one that I used because it managed all the gear swapping associated with each spell. It let you do far more complicated things than the in-game macros allowed and with speed that a player would not be physically capable of making (swapping in different gear sets before, during, and after casting specific spells, for example), but it only maximized your potential without hurting others directly. It's an edge, certainly, but not one that broke any of the game's coding.

[Rostum]

Pretty much every other MMO allows for UI modding so I would have just expected it to make it to this game. The custom plug-ins that were popularly used for FFXI were used because the game was a huge tedious bore, and were made because the development team at the time were morons out of touch with the genre.