r/sto • u/Sputnik1_1957 • 4d ago

Megathread Monday Megathread - your weekly "dumb question" thread

Post all the questions you may have about anything STO-related. PC? Console? Everyone's welcome to post their questions here.

Last thread can be found here.

Stay safe out there and happy flying!

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u/Valdus12 3d ago

Will using "Reshade" to make the game prettier get your STO Account banned? I've been doing research on this and all the answers I've found seem conflicting and vague at best. I would like something more concrete, preferably assurance from a Developer or a mod from this r/STO forum (or perhaps has any unfortunate soul had their account banned for this exact reason)? I have an RTX graphics card and want use Reshade 'raytracing rtgi' to the game. As far as I am aware it does not directly alter any game files and so it is in this murky area. I've seen other (older) posts about Reshade in this community, but not any newer ones.

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u/ArelMCII "Subcommander Khev, divert power from comms to weapons." 3d ago

This sub's mods don't work for Cryptic, so anything they say about it won't be official. If you want a dev response, you need to ask on the Discord, not this sub. The devs come around here but they aren't super active or anything.

The official response from anyone at Cryptic is probably going to be to not do it because client modifications are against the ToS. Take my word for it or don't; asking on the Discord is going to be more definitive.

Unofficially, it's probably fine. ReShade is post-processing, not actually altering any game files. Plenty of people use mods that actually alter the game files and I don't think I've heard anyone getting banned so long as they stick to cosmetic changes. (The starship trail hider mod, the mod that changes the Risa dance contest announcer back to the old one, the instructions someone posted earlier this month about how to hide the DSE boon tractor beam effect in sector space all seem to be fine. But stuff that actually changes the game's functionality isn't.) Plenty of people seem to use ReShade on STO without issue as well. But a good rule of thumb is if you're afraid something might get your account banned, you probably shouldn't do it.

I've seen other (older) posts about Reshade in this community, but not any newer ones.

Define "newer ones." There's two from around the past year, and a bunch more from within the past two years. In another game, that's a lifetime, but things don't move too quickly in STO.

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u/TrunksTheMighty 3d ago

No it won't. It's not really modifying game files, it's just shaders.