Built-in Parsers

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

ACT is starting to become the standard 3rd party app it feels like, the devs are going with turning a blind eye on it.
Idk what the number of users but in XI we had Windower and nobody ever got banned to my knowledge from using it and it was probably used by large marjority of its PC playerbase in its glorydays.

Now the small dev team that maintains XI has implemented the core features (that most people wanted) into the XI client so of course they could add a in-game parser if they chose too, difference is they are "too scared" people being picked on which is a lame excuse imho.

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I played Neverwinter Nights before getting into modern MMORPGs and that game exposed all of the dice rolls to the player. When I encounter people who react like, "YOU PARSE!!! I'M TELLING ON YOU TO A GM!!! *foaming at mouth and vibrating uncontrollably*" I am kind of stunned. My first reaction is to think, "Um, you are playing a game that revolves around numbers and has roots way back in dice rolling RPGs. You can't be serious." But they are serious and some people are really offended by the idea that their toon's abilities can be measured with numbers. My second reaction is to think of some way to find a compromise where SE might give a little and maybe we can calm these paranoid people down a bit because I do think that they are making a mountain out a mole hill.

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Originally Posted by Baingoleth

Does FFXIV have an issue where people look on the outside like they can do an instance fine but in reality are just able to hide their ineptitude?

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Yes. Of course the obvious cases are easy to notice (certain buffs / debuffs / DoTs never being up etc.), but if a person is geared alright and knows the basics of their rotation (can beat the SSS dummy for the fight, for example), they can still fail at maintaining decent DPS in a fight while doing mechanics correctly and not dying. The issues may come from example them failing to keep DPSing while handling mechanics (only for small moments at a time but they add up), failing to adjust one's rotation to a specific fight, failing to take advantage from other players' buffs, even things like failing to queue your abilities (I've had one of these in my raid group once: on the outside everything was right but their parses sucked)... These are the type of people who often don't even know they're doing really badly (because they are after all well geared and know what they're doing, at least in theory).

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Originally Posted by Baingoleth

Does FFXIV have an issue where people look on the outside like they can do an instance fine but in reality are just able to hide their ineptitude?

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Absolutely. Chief among them were DPS unable or unwilling to perform a proper rotation, which is the bulk of their damage. For instance, I had a Monk in V2S do nothing except Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes and Rockbreaker. Not only does Monk have two combos it needs to cycle, but Rockbreaker is an AoE and V2S has no additional targets except the boss. His numbers were nearly 50% less than a comparably geared Monk. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to notice these things since most players typically aren't pay attention to the rotations and skill usage of others unless it directly relates to their damage.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Absolutely. Chief among them were DPS unable or unwilling to perform a proper rotation, which is the bulk of their damage. For instance, I had a Monk in V2S do nothing except Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes and Rockbreaker. Not only does Monk have two combos it needs to cycle, but Rockbreaker is an AoE and V2S has no additional targets except the boss. His numbers were nearly 50% less than a comparably geared Monk. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to notice these things since most players typically aren't pay attention to the rotations and skill usage of others unless it directly relates to their damage.

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So, it's not so much that a player's ridiculous rotation can't be watched during the fight as much as ACT just makes it more obvious. Fair enough. People who are unable to play their class with excellence shouldn't be joining instances that require excellence and should be kicked. As I said before, I like parsers and personally have no issue with the whole party's stats being revealed to the people in the group. I just wish there was a way to simply weed out the players who don't understand their class without having anti-parser people losing their minds. I've grown quite used to parsing without anyone making threats since well before FFXIV and I find all this talk of reporting to GMs unsettling.

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Originally Posted by Baingoleth

...People who are unable to play their class with excellence shouldn't be joining instances party finder groups that require asks for excellence and should be kicked....

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Fixed for you.

Parsing helped me realize I wasn't performing to the best of my potential. I realized this after someone told me I could easily be doing a lot better in that A10S fight we just did, and sent me the screenshot of their parsers. They then told me to stay in Deliverance the whole time, and were happy to inform me afterwards that I went up by quite a lot.

I had never really thought about the damage I did as a Warrior. I'd stay in Deliverance for as long as I could, sure. But I didn't realize that I could push myself even further by taking risks, and that those risks would eventually add up and be translated into a lot more damage.

This is especially true now with the new Warrior changes, seeing as how important Inner Release and Berserk windows are. Finding out the best times to use them and seeing which ones end up giving you the biggest damage boost is the key to doing the best damage you can. How are you supposed to figure this out without parsing?

If anything, the game should at least show you YOUR individual DPS during fights, and then give you the option to see how much better or worse you did compared to other players of your job who completed that fight. That's the beauty of FFlogs - it tells you by just how much you can improve, and it even let's you see HOW you can improve!

And yet it seems some people are satisfied going through all the effort of maxing their class, getting the best gear possible, and then proceeding to doing the BARE MINIMUM their job can do in order to clear the fight. Makes me wonder why they even bother playing the game...

Anyways, since I'm writing this post, it just made me realize - if they can't even get rid of the STUPID character limit in the forums, I doubt they'll ever bother worrying about built-in parsers.

Buddy we've had this topic come up for about 3 to 4 years now. You can mask it any way you want or ask it any way you want and the answer is still the same as if Yoshida had said it the first time in 10 different languages.

No.

Accept it.

The sight of people treating other people like a number isn't going to go over well.

Heard several incidents in FFXIV where it got bad in Japan too.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

The sight of people treating other people like a number isn't going to go over well.

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This is what began to sour me on the raid scene, honestly.

Not parsing per se, that's no big deal. It's treating people so expendably, as if all they're good for is those numbers. Or the midcore groups that were suddenly all about trying to be world-prog level/speedrun-or-bust. There's nothing wrong with trying to push for improvement, but I don't raid for the glory, I do it cause I enjoy taking on a challenge with a team. Once that sense of team solidarity started to be overshadowed by parse-chasing, that's when I was happy to step back a bit. Hell, I find more camaraderie in PvP these days than raiding, and while I won't blame that on parsing, it hasn't done much to help that.

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Originally Posted by Enla

snip <3

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After the Shirogane patch first came out I was a few days late to doing one of the new dungeons. Ended up in there with a healer that hadn't done the dungeon either. Was trying to adjust to SMN changes on top of trying to REMEMBER dungeon mechanics from the video I watched prior to entering. I ended up raising the healer on several occasions along with other party members. The tank got really nasty with me and asked me why I wasn't doing enough DPS cause they were parsing. I legit haven't been in a dungeon since. Very demotivating.