The only 'Real' solution to DPS Meters

It's been a hot topic for awhile, and especially now with nearly every endgame fight involving some sort of hard dps check.

It's obvious SE wants us, the players, to measure our skill in the form of numbers, and yet they make the public use of meters a ban-able offense?

Do not sugar coat it. Not a special training dummy, not a personal meters that's unshareable, not some sort of proving grounds, no color-coded junk.

A damage meter.

One we can openly share with others. One we can use without fear of being banned. One to not only measure our own performance, but that of our party. One with a break down of abilities used output achieved, to point out to ourselves and others where the mistakes are being made and where we can improve.


The only two complaints for those against it:

1) PS4 players are at a disadvantage: Then have someone else with a PC help you. Unfortunately that's the best answer I have right now, as having SE develop their own in-game parser is more of a "hopeful future" than it is a next step.

2) It will be used for harassment: Then why couldn't we just report the players using it as a harassment tool and have them dealt with in the same way we deal with all other forms of harassment? "Guns don't kill people, people kill people...With guns."

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Originally Posted by Renault

2) It will be used for harassment: Then why couldn't we just report the players using it as a harassment tool and have them dealt with in the same way we deal with all other forms of harassment? "Guns don't kill people, people kill people...With guns."

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Then, don't give them guns.

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Originally Posted by Aezelas

Then, don't give them guns.

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So begins the immediate derailment of a thread.

Except everyone would and in some cases already do in them in a way counter to the desire of the devs. Also a parse will not teach people to correctly use their positionals or hold buffs to when they are most beneficial to maximize DPS in an actual real encounter. At the end of the day someone will mess up or not play to max potential and be subsequently and unceremoniously kicked from any real progression battle and under you plan with SE's seal of approval.

The playerbase at large is extremely short-sighted (which is amazing considering the average age of MMO gamers) and in the large majority of cases would abuse such a feature should it be officially sanctioned. If they add it officially across all platforms you also open yourself up to a multitude of players who cannot even begin to accurately understand the results of the parse and make snap judgments without considering other factors that went on in the fight should it fail. (I've met people that didn't consider the Egi damage to count towards the SMN damage :/ )

I've seen it happen many times, just get over it. No one is outright banning anyone over parses, just abuse of your fellow players which goes largely unreported as many of them don't bother or just quit the game entirely after being shamed. They should never officially sanction parses, end of story.

No, this is the only real solution for dps meters

If people are so afraid of duty finder harassment due to DPS parsing just make an official DPS meter an option for premades you can turn on and off.

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Originally Posted by Aezelas

Then, don't give them guns.

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By your logic: cinemas should stop selling popcorn. There is always a group of people which likes to throw with it.

If the world would work like this, everything would be restricted and there would be restrictions for restricted matters.

Whenever it comes to parsers, people go savage about it. Right now people get kicked, harassed and what not all over the place. It looks like people who don't want it, are either worried they might get exposed or even worried they might get kicked for bad dps themselves.

There are threads out there with people saying they have the right to have a "different approach" (someone even said they have the right to suck). Just give me a tool to find out right away rather than at a boss or some other crucial moment. I want the right to know when people have a "different approach".

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Originally Posted by Wobi

I've seen it happen many times, just get over it. No one is outright banning anyone over parses, just abuse of your fellow players which goes largely unreported as many of them don't bother or just quit the game entirely after being shamed. They should never officially sanction parses, end of story.

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Statements like these are largely anecdotal, I can easily say that in the long time and many number of MMO's i've played i have personally seen less issues with players having in game methods of performance measurement as opposed to many other reasons for player harassment.

The solution to all forms of harassment will always be the same: Call a GM.

The facts however remain that the majority of endgame encounters are designed around DPS checks and players have no adequate in game way to measure their performance, no more no less.

It'd be nice if at least one of these threads didn't devolve into the anti-parse fear mongering they usually do, and players can come to the understanding that people will harass one another for any reason they can find, but preventing legitimate and positive game improvements / features isn't a solution to community issues, proper harassment reports and GM actions are.

To all those that disagree:

How about a constructed argument? One that I haven't already replied to in my original post.

I get harassed for choosing astro should they not have added it to the game too ?

As it stands right now, a failure of a tank, and a failure of a healer is quite obvious, even if there are more than one of each in a party. It usually results in a domino-effect of a party wipe, and who the first domino to topple over is right in plain sight of everyone.
When a tank or a healer fails, they'll be booed and jeered, as one would expect. I wouldn't say I'm the worst tank out there, but I've sure felt the pain when I messed something up!

But when a DPS doesn't carry their weight, it's not always so obvious.
Yeah sure there's times when you see someone trying to shoot Bismarcks back from the island or something like that, and you know they're not contributing anything. But often times, you have four or more dps classes smashing away at a target, and if there's a harsh dps check involved in the fight, you fail. You wipe. But there's nobody to point the fingers at. There's nobody to say to, "Hey you could do better. Would you like some tips?" There's nobody to receive the booing and jeering the tanks and healers have to go through.

Not only is a lack of an ingame damage meter report bad for supporting a players improvement, it's also against the equality of roles. There's a reason tanks and healers are usually in higher demand. Because playing them comes as a double edged sword. People love you, but if you mess up, they'll hate you forever. DPS classes don't get this treatment, and can soar on by with mediocrity and never be noticed, be called out, or improve. If a DPS class were to live with the fear of being treated poorly when they play lazily, they may not see playing as a tank or a healer as such a scary thought anymore. And maybe, just maybe, we'd see a more tanks, more healers, and less of a queue time all around.

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Originally Posted by Renault

2) It will be used for harassment: Then why couldn't we just report the players using it as a harassment tool and have them dealt with in the same way we deal with all other forms of harassment? "Guns don't kill people, people kill people...With guns."

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The "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a fallacious argument that typically only Americans use (I'm an Ex-pat with a unique perspective having lived in several countries with varying laws).

When accused of being rude or abusive, Americans are quick to cite that people are rude and abusive all around the world. So by your own logic, there should be roughly equal murder rates in all first world countries. But that's not the case. America's murder rate per capita is at keast 10 times higher than any other first world country (which have strict gun regulation)... with 90+% of the deaths being caused by gun violence.

Yes, people make the decision to be bad people... but guns give them an easily accessible tool to be bad people. Same thing with a parser. Jerks are going to be jerks regardless of whether or not they have parsers (guns), but the parser (gun) makes it much easier for them to abuse people (kill people).

That being said, I'm not against parsers altogether. I've used them in the past with other games, and I wasn't adversely affected, mainly because I wanted to be as good as I could be. But I saw abuse of others first hand; even if it was somewhat deserved for refusing to listen to advice, etc, it doesn't make it right. There have been plenty of great suggestions on how to include parsers but avoid the negative social effects. In particular, a "game" at the Golden Saucer to indirectly check your DPS, or personal parsers or dummy parsers.

Just because you may be responsible with parsers (guns), doesn't mean everyone is, or even the majority are.

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

So begins the immediate derailment of a thread.

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Pretty much.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

snip.

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But they are going to use it anyway. As can be seen with many other cases of control, not just guns, controlling something through restriction does not make the use of it go away.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

Terrible comparisons

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Lets not turn this into the gun debate or imply that parsers are tools designed specifically to inflict harm / act as a tool of self defense (as guns usually are).

A proper comparison to a parser would be a stopwatch, or a calculator. Both are inherently harmless tools that perform no function outside of quantifying data, they in no way shape or form can do any harm to another player even if used incorrectly.

Can they be read incorrectly? Sure.

Can players be jerks with them? Yep.

These are both community concerns, ones that are better left to the GMs to interpret and enforce.

The game should not suffer a lack of positive features because of a fear of players mistreating each other on the internet, as that can be said about nearly every single system in the game from Glamours and Dyes, to minions and job choices. The key difference being that content is being designed with performance in mind and players have no way of knowing what that level or performance is on an individual level.

Also they probably prefer to be preemptive about harassment. This game doesn't seem to have the same amount of GM involvement that other games have. Also with cross server groups it emboldens the jerks. If we believe that the anti tell system in place for dungeons is for harassment and not some weird server issue.

I kind of miss meters from other games. But also remember the shaming of the jerks in main cities to keep the jerks inline. A few complaints from them usually led to making them miserable instead.

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Originally Posted by Ryel

Lets not turn this into the gun debate or imply that parsers are tools designed specifically to inflict harm / act as a tool of self defense (as guns usually are).

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The OP opened the door, I was simply responding and debunking the ignorant claim that "guns don't kill people, people do", and he made the original comparison.

As I said, I'm not against parsers personally (I have used them), but I am capable of acknowledging and understanding that they do compound an already existing problem and make it worse. I have seen abuse first hand, and it's not acceptable.

However, there are ways to implement parsers while mitigating the negative effects.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

However, there are ways to implement parsers while mitigating the negative effects.

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Which are? C'mon man, this is a discussion. Let's hear your ideas!

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

As I said, I'm not against parsers personally (I have used them), but I am capable of acknowledging and understanding that they do compound an already existing problem and make it worse. I have seen abuse first hand, and it's not acceptable.

However, there are ways to implement parsers while mitigating the negative effects.

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Abuse and Harassment is unacceptable in all forms, which is where proper teaching and enforcement come into play.

You don't restrict the functions of a calculator or a stopwatch because someone might get upset that they got poor results, you allow systems that teach them why they got those results and you punish the people who would harass them for getting them in the first place.

What sounds like the better approach? Take away / disallow game functions that everyone can benefit from because people can abuse them without proper education and oversight? Or, Teach people the hows and whys of the tools and their functions and weed out the bad applies via GMs?

People are already using them, what could it hurt to just make it available to everyone? At least if SE made it the results should be accurate and not "estimate" dots and such.
The game needs it...just give it to us please. I just would prefer to have it so that you only parse yourself and only share if you want to via some options/toggles. Problem solved. The battle log is just a mess. The log doesn't even give us an option to sort the data at all.

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Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

People are already using them, what could it hurt to just make it available to everyone? At least if SE made it the results should be accurate and not "estimate" dots and such.
The game needs it...just give it to us please. I just would prefer to have it so that you only parse yourself and only share if you want to via some options/toggles. Problem solved. The battle log is just a mess. The log doesn't even give us an option to sort the data at all.

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I simply can't agree with this. So you parse yourself, but nobody else can see it? How can you tell if someone is a weak link in your party? There's no need to cut back on the features already enabled by a third party application. People would still turn to that if this were the case. All or nothing, as far as I see it.

People can already download a parser, there are a few Videos that help with the set up. Using said parser for personal use wont get you banned. The simple solution was already mentioned,use of a parser should be allowed in PF and static groups.

Lets face it most static progression groups already use them. Allowing the option to use a parser in PF would be both positive and negative, PF leader can make it clear that you need to do x amount of dps, failing to do so consistently leaves said person no excuse if they are asked to leave. I do not want to count how many Biz EX groups failed to even make the dps check for the snakes phase, after the PF group req clearly stated Full exp or kill ( this translates into know your shit and pull your weight)

With or without a parser people can already be extremely abusive. That and during the many DF runs I can tell which of the 1 or sometimes both DD's are lacking just by focus targeting them and looking at there rotation or switching to battle logs (who needs parser when trash is dying slow), I don't hurl abuse but I do think FFS in for a long ass run.

To summarize this Parser in DF -hell no
option to use or not use one in PF/Static groups- hell yes
personal use of course, how else are you gonna 1 know your doing bad or good and 2 set yourself targets to achieve and improve. (Git Gud as Yoshi puts it)

Just make it for personal use. You may be against that method OP, but I would rather have it that way instead of like it is/was in WoW. People reading the numbers off blindly not taking into account mechanics. Why make a situation potentially worse when it doesn't need to be.