Endgame and raid fans of Final Fantasy XIV might know what ATC is, but for other players that plugin can be a question mark.
What is ACT
ACT or Advanced Combat Tracker is a third-party program recording the stats of your group during a raid or any content you play. This data can then be used to analyze a fight and see what mistakes have been made or how could you improve your skills rotation to output more damage for example. A lot of players have been using it for a long time now be it for simple DPS check or to publish their logs on various ranking websites.
Should I be using ACT then?
The short answer is no. Why? Because Third-party programs are forbidden in FFXIV.
In a recent Developers Live Letter, the team took some time to come back on the very anticipated subject of parsers and other in-game plugins. Knowing that a huge part of the community is using mods or plugins to modify the game, they made clear that the usage of this kind of unofficial content was forbidden and would be punished. While some mods simply change how your game looks or the model of your character some other changed the in-game experience by displaying invisible AOEs during boss fights or even produced a sound before a spell would be cast by the boss. After the global announcement that third-party programs were not allowed in FFXIV, the team explained why the usage of ACT, in particular, would be punished.
Being able to see how much damage your team members are doing in real-time (enough or not) can lead a player using a parser to criticize another player and create a bad experience for one or both players and Square Enix is then looking to avoid the usage of any DPS meter.
Square Enix also announced that they would never add an official DPS meter of any sort in the game, trying to keep the general atmosphere friendly and beginner-friendly.
We'd advise you to keep your game vanilla and enjoy the experience without using any third-party programs!
If you have any questions or feedback on the matter feel free to drop a message in the comment section below and join us on the FFXIV portal!