Survey: Community Opinions Regarding Parsing/Parsers in Final Fantasy XIV

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Originally Posted by Khanscott

Can I be pro-parser/anti-idiots who don't know how statistical data works? ...or would that cause the raiding scene to convulse so hard that spines begin to snap?

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I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this statement. Care to clarify? Because if it's an insinuation that people misuse statistics, that occurs on both sides or every argument under the sun. If it's an insinuation that my survey will not be largely representative, then I am already aware. The OP has that disclaimer in there three times. ^^;; But clarification would be much appreciated.

A shame I came across the survey a day too late. Would you be willing to place a HB of the foundation question and the respective surveys at the tail of the OP, for anyone curious?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

A shame I came across the survey a day too late. Would you be willing to place a HB of the foundation question and the respective surveys at the tail of the OP, for anyone curious?

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Hi Shurrikhan! I do plan to create a PDF document with all the survey results in it, charts, graphs, statistics and all. ^^ I would like to have it ready by Monday for the maintenance downtime, but I may not be able to because the senester has started, and I'm kind of surprised at the amount of homework I already have. If it is not out by Monday, then it will be up following the week of Housig release. That way people will have a chance to view it after all the hub-bub. ^^

I'm sorry you missed the survey. I would have been happy to have your input.

I put this in the DF story thread, but I wanted to get a little discussion on it here.

So I started leveling my DRG (haven't touched it since Gordias). Man I am bad. Like LITERALLY bad. I kept forgetting to hit my 4th weaponskills, I let BotD drop like a half a dozen times over the course of the 15 minute dungeon. I may or may not (i plead the 5th) have forgot to use Heavy Thrust before AOEing a few times.

Yet, I still managed nearly 1900 DPS across the entire dungeon (culling set to 60, so 1 continuous parse). My friend on WAR (has 0 idea how to play it well) did 880 DPS, WHM (sprout) did 850 DPS, and the BLM (sprout) did 820 DPS. All 4 people nearly identical gear all syncd.

Being fair - I'd consider my level of play in this instance average. It was not good, yet I still managed to do nearly 50% of the parties damage. Do people really think that is ok?

I also did my leveling roulette on DRG. Got copperbell . Sprout tank, and sprout healer, same WAR buddy, but he's on BRD this time (why does he have AOE at level 18 and I don't; this freakin game). The healer was level 50 something syncd down. The tank was vocal and asked how he was doing etc, and we let him know he was doing fine.

The healer was simply standing there. casting cure anytime someone dipped to 99% HP. I tolerated it (they're level 53 or something mind you) for about 5 minutes before saying "xxxx : feel free to throw stones out there if no one is in danger of dying. It'll help us get through it quicker and you can just let the natural out of combat regen heal us up after.

They didn't say a word, but they definitely listened. They were still 'panic' curing, i.e. when someone got to like 70% HP and mobs were like 3s from dying, but I figured once was enough.

So not all bad news, some good in there too :)

I don't think offical parsers will make anything any worse than it already is, yesterday I was harrassed by a dps for using cure1 when I meant to use cure II causing the tank to die ,which was totally my fault. The dps kept spamming a macro mocking me for it and at the end of the dungeon he pointed out the wipe again, there was no parse involved in that incident but still could count as harrassment . Since macros were abused here does that mean they should be removed? Obviously, no reporting someone for harrasment would be the better option (I didnt report that dps I Don't report anyone unless its really really really extreme) I chose to ignore that dps and finish the dungeon,but thats just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this statement. Care to clarify? Because if it's an insinuation that people misuse statistics, that occurs on both sides or every argument under the sun. If it's an insinuation that my survey will not be largely representative, then I am already aware. The OP has that disclaimer in there three times. ^^;; But clarification would be much appreciated.

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I think it is a dig at you, Hyomin. I hope I'm mistaken because the attack is certainly not warranted. :(

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the results of your survey. But, don't slack on your homework to get it out.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Now, I know there are a lot of people out there who could use improvement in their game play to reach the 99% percentile. However, not everyone wants to put that much effort into the game. That should be accepted by the best players. Just like a casual player should know they have no business trying to get into cutting edge content. That's where the problems come into play.

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It's important to know what these numbers mean. 99th percentile means that 99% of the readings are below the stated number. If you use it to group players, by definition 99% of the playerbase is below the 99th percentile. Always. Even if the DPS difference is less than 1%. It's a relative ranking of where you are, but saying we want the entire playerbase to be at the 70th percentile is mathematically impossible. The thing we really want is to make the measured gap between the percentiles smaller, as it's quite large right now.

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Casuals (like me) don't want to be harassed for playing at a 70% percentile by someone demanding 99% percentile performance in non-hard content. It's like a professional baseball player coming upon a minor league team and raging on them because they don't play as well as he does. However, a minor league player has no business stepping onto the field of a major league tournament playoff game.

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Does this actually happen at a frequency above what could be explained by the average rate of people being jerks, though? I and my 50-60th percentile casual self have run stuff with other people in this thread (including Moro and HyoMinPark), and nobody's acted like that while they were putting up stratospheric numbers compared to mine. Nobody cared. We were clearing at a decent speed and having a good time. Outside of progression content, that's what the overwhelming majority wants, parser or no parser.

I did have a 30th percentile friend with us on a couple of those as well, and they've been able to use the FFLogs data to change some stuff around and got over 40th last time. While that's not earth shattering, they were pretty happy to make such a noticeable improvement. We'd have had no real way to do that without parser data. :)

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You say the situation could be resolved by parsers. I say the situation could be resolved by having individuals read the description of the PFs

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Really, the problem is that the gap between the percentiles in output is a chasm. It's HUGE. Narrowing that is difficult, but if you want it to matter less, you can't have one person doing triple the DPS of another in the same job. That's going to matter because it's such a huge difference.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

It's important to know what these numbers mean. 99th percentile means that 99% of the readings are below the stated number. If you use it to group players, by definition 99% of the playerbase is below the 99th percentile. Always. Even if the DPS difference is less than 1%. It's a relative ranking of where you are, but saying we want the entire playerbase to be at the 70th percentile is mathematically impossible. The thing we really want is to make the measured gap between the percentiles smaller, as it's quite large right now.

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I think this is an important distinction. There will always be a bottom 10% and there will always be a top 10% but as it stands at the moment the difference between those is so considerable that there are clearly people playing their jobs at their full potential and people playing their jobs by letting their cat lay on their keyboard.


There is nothing that can be done to bring down the top dps aside from nerfing the dps potential of a job which doesn't make anyone a better player but seems to be the stance SE has taken given some recent adjustments like the 4.2 WAR revamp.

Top tier WARs will still be doing the best dps a WAR is capable of but some simple things like a simplification of the burst window and a reduction in the importance of Storm's Eye means that people will have an easier time following the rotation but also that top tier WARs lose some personal dps.

Bringing down the top bar doesn't raise the bottom though, and the only way to raise that skill floor is for the average player to see they're doing something wrong. A parser in-game (even a personal one) could show someone that never using their melee combo on RDM is a huge dps loss or never using Heavy Thrust as a DRG is similarly detrimental.

Will there be people who still don't care? Of course. But Little Timmy (to borrrow Sebazy's hypothetical sprout) very well might care enough to improve if he knows he's doing something wrong. We will still have bad players but we would undoubtably have less of them.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Hi Moro! I'll answer your questions.

First, I am not okay with people not pulling their own weight in clear/farm parties. Everyone I group with is expected to come prepared for the content. That means, know your class, know the boss mechanics, have good equipment, and have your food.

Experienced players feelings are not less important. They are just not the only feelings involved in this discussion. Parsers affect every level of player from the most casual to the most committed. It's a hot topic for everyone.

Now, I know there are a lot of people out there who could use improvement in their game play to reach the 99% percentile. However, not everyone wants to put that much effort into the game. That should be accepted by the best players. Just like a casual player should know they have no business trying to get into cutting edge content. That's where the problems come into play.

Casuals (like me) don't want to be harassed for playing at a 70% percentile by someone demanding 99% percentile performance in non-hard content. It's like a professional baseball player coming upon a minor league team and raging on them because they don't play as well as he does. However, a minor league player has no business stepping onto the field of a major league tournament playoff game.

You say the situation could be resolved by parsers. I say the situation could be resolved by having individuals read the description of the PFs.

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Thank you Kacho! As usual your signature is adorable.

I appreciate the answers and first off I'd like to apologize if it seems like this could be aimed at anyone performing at the current 70th percentile. If you're doing anything like that first off you and I are right there together and second of all you have a base understanding of the classes you're playing and while you may not have mastered when to weave oGCDs or something you aren't a no-melee RDM or an Ice Mage.

Don't misunderatand, if you don't already parse I still think an integrated parser would help you even passively as it would help anyone with a basic amount of care about the players they're grouped with which I'm certain you have.

I think your understanding of how parsers should be used is ultimately very similar to mine. I have no desire to harrass someone about their lacking dps, even in a PF specifically stating something like "bring big **** dps" I don't think there is room for harassment over performance. Rather in an appropriate situation if a parser parser gave info someone could use to improve I would point it out to them. Unless it had some kind of effect on whether or not we're clearing in a reasonable time (no 45min Ala Mhigo runs pls) I wouldn't ever even vote someone out for not following that advice.

I'm sure there are people who would misuse this system were it implimented just as there are people who abuse the current system. Harrassment will never be tolerated by SE though and the potential for harassment should not mean that we don't give a feature a chance. You can harass someone in party chat but we aren't all communicating via pvp pre-made phrases after all.

I hope this makes you feel better in some way about what I posted. I would never condone harassment.

I think the big concern for me is that we simply have no way of knowing how many players keep their mouths shut and tolerate other players they meet who are showing in their parses with lower numbers because any mention of parsing is reportable.

Many people don't know the art of criticism, either. So, genuine attempts to help can degrade fast, parser or no. I think we all HAVE seen this.

So, it feels a bit of a circular argument to me when the counter is, "Well, have YOU seen any Parser related harassment?" When it's bannable. Most players aren't out to lose their accounts.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

I think the big concern for me is that we simply have no way of knowing how many players keep their mouths shut and tolerate other players they meet who are showing in their parses with lower numbers because any mention of parsing is reportable.

Many people don't know the art of criticism, either. So, genuine attempts to help can degrade fast, parser or no. I think we all HAVE seen this.

So, it feels a bit of a circular argument to me when the counter is, "Well, have YOU seen any Parser related harassment?" When it's bannable. Most players aren't out to lose their accounts.

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Yes. But you get other forms of it that are largely invisible, like people being kicked for no apparent reason. I've had that happen to me, and it's not great.

So we have this weird situation where if we have player X who is not using a good rotation:
1. Me saying "X, I see your DPS is low because you're not using ability Z after combo Y" is a bannable offense.
2. Me in Discord saying "that X guy is doing lousy DPS, lets kick him" and then doing a silent group vote kick is perfectly allowed because different play styles.

Is that really better?