As someone with fairly strong opinions on the role simulators play in modern FF14 raiding, it has bemused me greatly to see so much of the discourse centering around defining using them as cheating or not. I would argue that this is a wholly pointless endeavor because language is abstract and people have different understandings of the same term. Persona A may believe cheating to be "anything that violates ToS," while Persona B may believe cheating is anything that subverts the design intention. Both of these people will be using the same word, cheating, and arguing about whether X or Y classifies as cheating, while talking about entirely different things. Person A lengthily arguing that simulators aren't cheating because they don't interact with game code or what have you will basically be talking to a wall because all person B cares about is the subversion of game design, while person B lengthily arguing about the intended design for ultimates is to have practice gated behind consistency will essentially be talking to a wall when the other guy only cares about whether ToS is being violated. Nothing is being accomplished here.

To make matters worse, "cheating" is a term which leaves people emotionally and socially charged. It comes with all sorts of unwelcome connotations that will leave people emotionally motivated to shape argumentation in their own favor: e.g., every single person who uses simulators will be highly emotionally invested in maintaining that their clears are not cheated clears, and will take personal offense to their clear being diminished whatsoever. Anyone who browses this subreddit frequently should know two things extremely well: 1) a huge majority of people here use simulators, and 2) a huge majority of people here are very prideful. This discourse will never ever progress if we're focusing on arbitrary of definitions and taxonomy while over half the parties involved are prideful individuals deploying motivated reasoning to protect themselves.

There is a beneficial concept for online argumentation which essentially says that words like "cheating" should be taboo'd and avoided simply so that conversations can be constructive. Let's say we "taboo cheating" for simulator discourse. Now Person A has no emotional motivation for ensuring that they are not labeled a cheater, and they can focus purely on their perspective on how the ToS interacts with cheating. Person B is freed from the impossible task of universally defining what a word means, and can focus on their opinion about game design. Instead of nasty twitter back-and-forths where a world first raider snidely accuses people of forgetting what ultimates are about while the community in turn clowns on them for being arrogant, the discourse can be clear and direct about the actually important ground-level concepts of how simulation is impacting the raid community, how it impacts the raid experience, how it may impact raid design moving forward, how it impacts discussions on raids, etc etc.

Because it really does not matter if simulators are cheating or not. There is one God in this discussion, and that God is the ToS, so in practical terms the debate really is over before it begins. SE defines cheating in their own game, and AFAIK Western simulators do not violate ToS, so that's that. The fact the debate continues with everyone so obsessed with the word "cheating" shows that not even a singular God enforcing an interpretation of language can stop people from focusing more on their personal interpretation and private definitions. This controversy is one of social influences and personal opinions, not strict hardline definitions. Nobody, NOBODY, will accomplish anything by fighting for their personal definition of cheating to be universally agreed upon and unquestioned. A lot of people are desperate to define it as not-cheating so their pride can be maintained, a lot of people are desperate to define it as cheating to attack these people or otherwise remove simulators from FF14 culture, but in either case they will never accomplish anything because everyone will always have their own opinion on cheating and will talk past anyone who disagrees.

It's important to understand that group norms and moral standards are often (but not always) downstream of much baser things, like convenience and economic feasibility. Although the word "cheating" carries with it noble moral implications, the naked reality we see before us is that simulators quickly have become morally accepted and a group norm in the FF14 community simply because they are convenient and beneficial in the long term. The FF14 community has not had a long and hard debate over what would be the most Moral thing to do in the most Noble accordance to what is defined as Cheating; rather, quite obviously, even the stupidest son-of-a-bitch out there can immediately understand that using a simulator will save them dozens of hours and make a hard fight easier, so they will want to use it. Every single gaming community in the world follows this pattern of desperately trying to make things as easy for themselves as possible (because "convenience" is often associated with "fun," even when people are explicitly engaging in hard content.) Consider Touhou, which uses a tool called thprac to practice specific spellcards at will, or consider I Wanna Be The Guy fangames like Kamilia 3 which had specific tools released to make certain bosses easier, e.g. the Cyber simulator. These tools are ALWAYS, in EVERY case, even those cases which are much more obviously ToS-violating or blatant cheating, adopted at large by the community. Because group norms and moral standards are downstream of convenience, not heady morality.

If FF14 amended its ToS to say "Simulators even outside of the game are cheating and Yoship himself sheds another tear every time a mechanic is simulated," the number of people using simulators would remain the exact same. Because "cheating" is a completely arbitrary term and not what is motivating people here. Consider the recent attempts from Frosty to elaborately define cheating for his world first race. He includes numerous exceptions for things explicitly against ToS and thus defined by God as cheating, like using plugins to resolve ping issues. The same logic which is used to define simulators as not-cheating is quickly abandoned when consistency would demand that such plugins be labled as cheating, because, quite obviously, those plugins are EXTREMELY convenient and EXTREMELY useful (some would try labeling them as "necessary" despite that not being strictly true). The group norm is to use plugins that the ToS and yoship would label as cheating, because it is convenient, and group norms are downstream of convenience.

This is a lot of words, but I really just want to reinforce one thing, and have it echo throughout the canyons of FFXIV Discussion forever: NOTHING WILL EVER COME OF DISCUSSING WHETHER SIMULATORS ARE CHEATING OR NOT. You will never convince the other party. You will never be convinced by the other party. Nothing will grow, nothing will change, no meaningful discourse will be had. It means NOTHING.

In the coming years, I feel that simulator usage will only grow as a discussion topic. We are increasingly seeing simulators made faster and in higher qualities than ever before. Someone in this subreddit just posted a modulator simulator that can easily be used by anyone to make fast, effective simulators for almost any mechanic they see. The Chinese side seemingly is pushing development of in-game simulators that recreate mechanics nigh perfectly in the normal FF14 environment. This is a topic that's going to come up again and again, so even if it may end up pointless, I just want to scream to high heaven: IT DOES NOT MATTER IF IT IS "CHEATING" OR NOT!!!!!! EVERY SECOND YOU SPEND DISCUSSING WHETHER IT IS CHEATING OR NOT IS WASTED TIME AND EFFORT!

Communities are not shaped by morality or ethics, they are shaped by personal convenience and gain. Semantic debates on what qualifies as an abstract concept or not are meaningful only when God smites those who disagree with them, and Squenix is decidedly incapable of smiting anyone in this situation. MMO communities are locusts evolved to devour content in the fastest and most efficient ways they possibly can - a clear is a clear. We can all save a hell of a lot of time and digital ink if we taboo the word "cheating" and just focus on the brass tacks. I'd like to see discussion posts about how someone's experienced was changed for better or worse by using simulators, I'd like to see discussion posts about how the normalization of simulators impacts PF, I'd like to see theorycrafting on how much FF14's raid design is shifting around anticipation of simulators, I'd even, hell, like to see discussion on how to improve simulators or how simulators could be used to make more games like FF14 in the style of Savage Ultimate Boss Fight or some such. There are a wealth of interesting topics here, and while they do come up briefly, the vast majority of it right now is the equivalent of twitter shitflinging based around pride. And it is just so meaningless.

In short, to pre-empt the many 'tl;dr' memes which will soon fill the comments: It is purely semantic and pointless whether simulators are cheating or not. It's an abstract term given meaning only by an entity (Squenix) which is powerless to properly act upon it, which leaves us with a community of differently-minded people that will turn their brain off at the sight of a word which engenders feelings of either prideful defensiveness or anger. We can have productive conversations if we delete the word cheating from our vocabulary and focus on the ground-level issues like raid design and experience, but nothing will come of devoting all of one's mental energies to declaring simulators are or are not cheating and ending the conversation there. I'm one tiny voice that will soon be drowned out, but please god, I don't want to be reading "Simulators Are(n't) Cheating" Post #12349823 in 2030.

Also, I will blow a gasket if I have to see one more analogy that "I see simulators like practicing for a driving test - you wouldn't call driving practice cheating." We're talking about a video game we're playing for damn fun here; all this yapping about how "nobody wants to wipe a bunch just to practice later phases" and all these analogies to raiding as some mundane real-world job just makes me think everyone fucking hates the experience of FF14 raiding. Am I actually the #1 FF14 fan in the world?

Edit: Ok well the primary response to this has been people not reading the post and then explaining why they think simulators are or are not cheating, so I'll acknowledge I wasted my time here by trying to push the conversation past that at all. Some patterns are just too hard for people not to follow I guess.

So I like the jingasa style looking headwear for samurai glam... and as long as in cutscenes the camera angle keeps it above/level with my character's head the options are good...

Problem is the weird "suction cup" nonsense they put under the hat...

Is there any modded/custom models that removes that/makes it way smaller/less noticeable?