Seeing streamers using these on their stream and also non raiders (group parties/dungeons) maybe ffxiv need to add their own version of parsing to remove need of addons/plugins ???
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Seeing streamers using these on their stream and also non raiders (group parties/dungeons) maybe ffxiv need to add their own version of parsing to remove need of addons/plugins ???
It's mainly a thing to cover Square. So if you choose to download anything like that and there's technical issues or viruses, Square will simply tell you it's against their terms to even use them so your help will be next to nothing. I doubt they'll actually ban someone using them.
They don't want to add damage meters to avoid toxicity but they turn a blind eye to people using them as long as they are not calling people out and being abusive with it.
It's a very "don't ask, don't tell" rule. So long as you aren't being a jerk with your parser SE won't do anything about it. If they actually enforced it and somehow got rid of all parses the raiding scene in this game would die overnight.
It's kind of to their benefit to feign ignorance. Even if the tools the community makes are producing incorrect data, or data that differs from their own, and even if our assessments are incorrect, overall it directs people to more informed discussions than if we never had it, and by our discussions we are a step closer to producing more useful feedback for the developer. Of course, it's up to us for how we interpret it, analyze it, make suggestions, make arguments, but it's still overall a net positive nonetheless. Yeah some people will be rude about people in their party underperforming, though that's more an issue of rude people than ACT itself.
Some people I know who use it (definitely not me because I would never break the rules...) ignore the TOS because it's a pointless rule and it's impossible to enforce.
The stated intention behind the rule was to prevent harassment. This it flawed because bullies will bully others whether they have third party tools to back them up or not. At the end of the day, ACT does nothing more than organize data that the game already gives you.
If SE truly wished to shut down damage meters they could change the game to not transmit combat number for other players. Only providing personal damage + healing, party casts, and enemy HP updates would have virtually no impact on gameplay and completely eliminate any possibility of making a functional damage meter. The fact they have chosen not to shows just how little they truly oppose parsing.
I'd be a huge fan if SE wants to implement their own in-game damage meter, though if it isn't fflogs compatible or have an integrated system with the same tools then I suspect it wouldn't be used extensively.
It's hard to know exactly how well you are doing as a DPS without one. Yes, there's Stone, Sea and Sky, but that just gives a baseline gauge of whether you can output a certain minimum dps on a target dummy and isn't actually that useful of a metric and on top of that the HP bars on those aren't always balanced well. Yes, you can watch how fast mobs die to know if dps is good or not, but you can't really know how much of that contribution is you and what your actual output is relative to others. It also doesn't give any sort of fine detail about your performance or any realistic way to compare your performance from run to run. In short, if your goal is just to go out and have fun doing content and clearing it is enough for you then no, you don't need a parser at all. If your goal is to push your DPS skills as much as possible while having fun doing content then a parser is very much needed.
The other major use of a parser is for AST/DNC/DRG/etc to know who to throw their dps buffs onto in order to get the most of out them. The enmity meter sort of does this, but it's not a perfect option and isn't always a reliable gauge. E.g. multiple targets aren't always hit equally by every dps so might give different rankings depending on which you look at. And the same thing as above where if you are just out there to have fun and clear it doesn't matter who it gets tossed onto so you don't need a parser, but if having fun for you includes pushing your dps contribution to the limit then making sure your dps buffs end up on the people that are outputting the highest dps is essential and a parser gives this information at a glance.
Because SE allows it. I mean if you get caught with a parser then in the end you were being a jackals with it. It is allowed in the sense they do not go hunting down people that use it. More or less you have to do something that puts a gaint sign on your back for SE to even take notice.
SE doesn't mind parsers at all, that's why. They mind parsers being used to HARASS people but parsers on their own have never bothered the developers of this game. Yoshi-P himself has admitted multiple times to watching World First clear streams where a parser was quite clearly shown on screen and he had no issue with it at all. So long as you keep quiet and don't try to brow beat people with their numbers or add them to a black list like what has happened within the Japanese community previously they honestly could not care less about ACT.
Technically, you can't even escape it now because if you raid people will be uploading parses with your data and people will be able to search for them even if you haven't actually signed up for FFLogs.
Which I why I think they seriously need to have an option to just go anonymous and have your name removed from all parses in general. The current situation sucks because it places pressure on people to parse themselves lest FFLogs be potentially painting a very inaccurate image of their performance due to only some of their fights being parsed.
problem there is where the line is drawn between "deadweight" and simply "underperforming/underoptimized" depends on the person. so while many are reasonable, there's always gonna be folks who think that anything less than 100% is dead weight/sandbagging/ruining their prog etc etc, and then start being an idiot about it
@OP: there's some folks who use ACT as a reference for their own performance, such as seeing where and why their damage drops over a fight or how they might be underperforming compared to other possibly more experienced party members, and some raiders tend to use audio triggers to help shot-call for some of the tougher content (since all the info is already presented in game/logs this merely helps keep people from missing a queue or castbar during more hectic moments, etc)
Yeah, but the problem with that is that people will dismiss as you as garbage regardless if you're hiding your parses, so you can't win either way. I've been kicked/called out for being "bad" due to my skewed FFLogs data and similarly criticized for blocking my parses after my first bad experience with some random moron saying I was terrible based off of my only parse for a particular fight I hadn't even cleared yet.
As the previous poster stated they need to allow people to just opt out of the system entirely and replace their name with something generic if they do, as opposed to blatantly telling potential critics that the player in question doesn't want them seeing their data.
It isn't that they aren't opposed to parsing; Yoshida has made little secret he isn't a fan of them. They just know their raid scene is entirely dependent on them. As Billy noted, the day they ban parses or make it so ACT cannot track data, is the day the raid scene collapses.
Actually, that streamer was only "caught" because he had his Twitch information in his character search. If it had not been for that, they never would have done a thing.
That was also the straw that broke the camel's back, but not in regards to parsers. The person they were being nasty to had been on one of the Japanese player black-lists for awhile and that wasn't the first time people were apparently nasty towards them. And especially not the first time people have dragged someone through the mud on stream either. They ended up making that Streamer an example, and rightly so, but it was well in line with their bottom line in regards to parsers. What was odd about it is that it was one of the first bans they handed out for saying something on a stream as before the harassment had to happen in game in order to get their attention. However given how much of a problem those black lists happen to be it's really not surprising it happened.
Having a site for logs at all eliminates that possibility entirely. If you opted out of FFlogs entirely then people will think you're hiding something. The only solution to the problem you're bringing up is taking down the entire website, but, there's a myriad of reasons as to why that would be a terrible idea.
I guess that makes a little more sense but didn't they think that it would just be required "unofficially"? People can just bug you in discord, which a lot of raids/FCs require. In the end you're right "it is what it is" theres just a lot of holes in their logic.
It's the best of both worlds.
If they enforce this rule, raiders quit.
If they implement parsers, casuals quit.
I don't like non-official/third-part programs then I don't use it but a parser is still usefull to make a idea of our efficiency. Unfortunatly it is also used a toxic way. We miss some kind of ingame personal parser (that shouldn't be that hard to develop since it is mainly base on logs that are already in the fight chat tab).
The obvious solution is to make the default setting opt-in, as it should have always been. That way people not on there aren't assumed to be "hiding something" (which is always the assumption others are going to have for anyone purposely opting out of anything), they are just not a user of the site. Like suggested, their spot in groups that are uploaded would just be listed as a generic "Filler Job Here" with no personal information shared. The only people FFlogs should track and show are the people who want to be there. As a PS4 player who has never used fflogs, I still have various uploads randomly all over the place from random runs on there that I have no control over, and that isn't right at all. I mean, most of them are ok parses because I'm generally good at my job, but still it irks me to see stuff there without my consent and without any ability to upload my own logs.
The fact that SE already does this with things such as achievement scores should show that it is the professional thing to do. The default setting for achievements on the lodestone is hidden. People that want others to see their achievement scores have to purposely check off to have them visible to others if that is what they want. Which is the way anything that is primarily going to be used to compare with others should always be where possible.
To be completely frank with you, people would still look at you with suspicion if FFlogs was opt-in. It would arguably be even worse because you're being denied entry based on a tool you didn't even know existed. That said, I don't agree with the ability to opt-out of FFlogs being there in the first place, as it's a trap that hurts the person who does it. I should add that being denied entry from a PF group for whatever content you are doing is reasonable if you have poor logs, and the party lead doesn't want to carry you? Then they are not obliged to do so.
As to why people use ACT? Because SE knows that the raiding community would quit on the spot if they enforced their TOS. And ACT is simply a useful tool for self/group improvement, regardless of the near-mythical parser toxicity.
People use them because the fights require a certain dps check to clear. This has caused them to be the end all be all of endgame in ffxiv because of this. Getting that elusive top parse spot has become additional content for alot of the endgame community due to lack of anything else to do. (aka the parse runs and going for that golden parse). And yes a lot of raid groups when they fill a spot require you to be in the top 10% on fflogs, and yes if you ever done an EX or savage you are on ff logs even if you do not want to be because someone has uploaded their parse with you on it.
Personally I do not care about parsers as they can be helpful for yourself and groups not just in ffxiv but all themepark style mmos that focus on dps numbers. The problem is I would say is 90% + of the population has absolutely no clue on how to use them correctly. Big numbers has become of greater importance then clearing in party finder these days and that is wrong. People blatantly skip mechanics, do harder more high risk mechanics, doing more complicated strategies, dps refuse to limit break, and so on all all for the sake of getting higher parsers to upload. In the end people sacrifice clear rate and progression so that some dps and tanks can get 15secs more uptime to get a little higher parse log.
And honestly my biggest gripe about parses. You see people in initial progression focusing almost purely on DPS output instead of learning the mechanics. This causes progression to grind to a halt because people are too stupid to learn the fight and only look at parse logs during it. How many times in progression do you see people dead and the rdm/smn just nuking away instead of getting ppl up to keep dps up. A healer and others dead and a pld dying because their heal is a dps loss. Healers in prog using swiftcast to dps instead of saving for rez. People dying over and over and over to simple mechanics because they are trying to GREED 1 more gcd that in the end does not matter at all. People not using "Oh ****" abilities because they need them to cheese for an uptime mechanic later in the fight that is not really needed at all to clear but can add a whole 7secs more uptime..... This crap is getting worse and worse every expansion.
I sorta wish SE would add something to block parsers from running. I think the loss of that Epeen contest would do more good then bad for the entirety of the community. Raiding was alot more fun back in the ARR days before parsers became mainstream in this game. I honestly feel parsers and FFLogs made progression a lot worse then it use to be before they existed for the majority. At least in terms of initial learning and fight strategies are concerned.
This anti-improvement mindset needs to die. You can do mechanics and parse purple at the same time, it's not that hard. ACT is a tool that factually helps people learn fights and improve if they care to actually look at the logs. Plus, yes - DPS meters do make the inherently competitive role of DPS more fun. Nothing about ACT stresses or burns people out, it's practically what makes optimization - which many find fun - possible.
I don't think that last line is necessarily true. The raid teams I've been a part of in that type of content have generally been fairly chill, and a big part of what made my time with them so enjoyable was that for the most part, the focus was on enjoying the content AND doing well - if things went bad and people started tilting, it was time to end raid night early. The focus was on learning mechanics first, because dps doesn't matter if you're dying to every other big hit - dead dps do no dps. Going for top parses when you're still on progression is illogical and counter productive. You go for that top slot when you know the fight or frankly you're just wasting everyone's time. Including your own.
When I got burnt out on raiding, it was not because it was a dps race. It was always the commitment and schedule of it, spending 2-3 hours 2-3 nights a week even when I was tired or wanted to do something else. That's why I haven't picked up raiding again since I stopped a couple years ago. Frankly not having a parser in this game is part of why too. I hate the idea of dragging the group down because I'm not performing, and blindly hoping I'm pulling decent numbers is extremely stressful in itself for me.
I would say the toxicity around them would be a lot less, even if it isn't completely gone. Let's look at achievement scores as a comparison again. If you're a person who cares about achievements and see a person who hasn't enabled their achievements visible you most likely don't assume it must be because it's really low and they're pathetic. You do assume they must be someone who doesn't take achievements super seriously, since any serious achievement hunter wants to share and show them. But unless you're a real a-hole among a-holes you won't be treating them like trash because of it.
Same with fflogs. If in the opt-in fflogs world a person hasn't enabled it you probably will assume that they must not be a serious hardcore raider since any serious raider would have it enabled, but you would not automatically assume they must suck and treat them like trash unless you were a REALLY huge jerk. Most people, even ones that would have otherwise reacted negatively to poor logs, will give an unknown person in this situation the benefit of proving themselves in a duty first, which is fair. The people that wouldn't even give a person without logs a chance are going to be the super hardcore elite crowd, which if you don't have fflogs enabled, you aren't a part of anyways.
FFLogs really just makes raiding stressful to me because I feel like every mistake I make rotation-wise or mechanically is potentially getting smacked onto a permanent record that I have absolutely no control over.
I care about improving and doing well. I do my research on the Balance discord to know that I'm gearing/doing my rotation appropriately. But I'm not going to spend hours re-running the same raids for no purpose but to bloat some arbitrary score only a puny portion of the playerbase knows/cares about when I can be spending that time chasing other more tangible achievements.
The number of incidents where FFLogs has caused toxicity to be directed at me can be counted on one hand, but the mere fact that it enables such behavior at all irritates me. People should concern themselves with how someone performs in the now, not some silly number that can be easily skewed by inconsistent parses or misinterpreted via stupidity. A lot of people will only look at a bad parse without actually looking into what caused it, which can include deaths that were caused by mistakes on the part of other players. I cannot begin to count the number of times I've died at E6S due to getting an air bump circle but not having anyone get into it to keep me from dying for starters.
DPS meters are important to see how well you do and become better with your rotation.
Quite honestly:
To see who is the dead weight of a group. If you're in higher level content and you are failing dps checks, you need some sort of metric to determine who is or isn't pulling their weight. Since the game gives no indication other than Pass/Fail, ACT is almost a requirement.
In short, you can't have dps checks without a proper gauge of dps. People don't want to waste their time.
Well, the history behind this whole thing is kind of a mess. The problem goes back to WoW, which had a very linear form of end-game that forced tons of people into doing raiding. You'd have guilds that literally ran 4/5 weekdays doing end-game content and most people, even those who normally didn't like that kind of content, would get looped into it. As time went on players pushed efficiency by developing mods and other UI helper systems to make the fighting easier to deal with. In turn, Blizzard began tuning up fights to compensate for the mods and started adding things like DPS checks, with Brutalis in the Sunwell raid being particularly notorious. DPS meters were developed early on to combat the developers use of DPS checks and the developers in turn tightened the checks until it was too much, so they built in difficulty modes for different tiers of players since it was causing a toxic relationship.
So to put it bluntly: DPS meters have nothing to do with the toxicity as much as the developers making DPS checks. The meters just exist to help people get through fights, and the unfortunate result of this is that it lets other recognize which players are not up to par with pretty high accuracy as the only thing people at end game want to do is clear the content to get the loot. What also compounds things is that DPS checks are often more like gear checks since someone with 490 gear is going to out-perform someone with 480, thus make fights like E6S easier to contend with.
It's a flaw that developed in the Tank -> Healer -> DPS trinity that put most of the hardship of the fight on the DPS role, which to be fair WoW made the easiest role in the game to play. FFXIV on the other hand seems to think that DPS should be super high powered finger DDR with way more button rotation maintenance than either the tank or healer roles. Gunbreaker and Paladin may have a lot of buttons to press but DPS is the role that has the pressure to press those buttons 100% optimally all the time.
And then the people playing DPS also have to deal with long dungeon queues and other barriers to reaching max level so it's basically the hardest role to level and the hardest role to play. On the upside, the only places where the cracks show are in PVP and Savage, which makes sense since those are the modes that push the combat the system the most. I'm sure when they finally get to that FFXI version III they will have something better, but I don't think they are going to try to fix this one. The best thing they could do is animation fixes to the core races from 2.0.
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Comparing PvP HOT bars to the non PvP ones I think SE devs realize at some level they over did it on complexity with dps. However, it's like they are swinging to two different extremes with them. The PvP bar is too simplified because it puts the core rotation on one button. If someone has a three weapon skill rotation they do not need to have one button to use all the skills. World of Warcraft works fine with the way they have things set up and they don't have a lot of differences between pvp and pve skill sets. Using Machinist as an example, we should have that 1-2-3 combo on buttons 1-2-3. The thing that makes us have to look away from the field and figure out what we need to do next is the deviation to use the Air Anchor and Drill/Bio blaster, on top of unloading all the OGCD Gauss rounds and Ricochette rounds between overheat cycles. I'd get rid of the energy gauge for the robot and just have it as a cool down, probably get rid of the 50 heat gauge auto fill button as that's a pain in the neck and shouldn't even be needed in there with Air Anchor now boosting heat gauge, and make auto-crossbow overwrite the normal aoe shot as it isn't part of a combo.
If you join groups and they are openly toxic to you because of your parses (which are perfectly fine btw), you don't want to be in that group in the first place. FFLogs are saving you a lot of grief by letting you know which parties and people to avoid. Good raiders will look at the circumstances surrounding low numbers. Bad raiders will unga bunga number only.
Removal of parsers won't make those people less toxic - they'll find other reasons to be just as mean.
I mean in the end it really comes down to the people and their personal struggles. Everyone is struggling to some degree in life and sometimes that struggle is partially or completely related to a game. Sometimes we even vent our personal pain into the quantifiable in an effort to find some level of resolution to it, turning things like a DPS meter into a burning effigy that we sacrifice to find some level of closure. The real struggle with Savage or challenge mode content in MMOs is finding a good way to communicate the true difficulty of the encounter and to assure others who don't like the content that there are other ways to find a rewarding experience. If we ever figured out how to solve this problem it would probably do far more to reduce toxic behavior than restricting DPS meters.
Far easier way to reduce "toxicity" players do not take getting removed or being called out personally and either use the experience to seek out info to get better, or just ignore it and move on and find like minded players.