Observations on DPS in End Game

[skaterger]

I think a distinction between playing to a class's optimal potential and playing to an individual's skill cap
potential needs to be made here. While I would strongly agree that it would behoove every player to play to the best of his/her ability, it would be impossible to accurately ascertain someone's potential (especially strangers from df or pf).

For every player that finds keeping several dots and debuffs with 100% uptime, using all offensive cooldowns the second it's off cooldown, weaving in off gcd skills between gcds while simultaneously maintaining optimal positioning and avoiding all the crap on the ground child's play, I assure you there will be others who find it physically impossible to do so. This can be due to any number of reasons the previous poster mentioned (reflexes, brain lag, latency, rl distractions etc).

It's akin to telling you to learn to play an fps correctly, which means headshotting 100% of the time. If you can't you're bad.

tldr If a random dps does not live up to your "standards", but is trying his hardest and done all he could (read rotations, practice on dummy) How will you label him then?

[bokchoykn]

tldr If a random dps does not live up to your "standards", but is trying his hardest and done all he could (read rotations, practice on dummy) How will you label him then?

If the effort is there, I respect that. Even if the effort is not there (because not everyone cares about being skilled at this video game) I even respect that too. I don't expect all players to be pros. Some will never be good enough to defeat Titan HM without a carry, etc... That's perfectly fine.

The entire point of the post is that the road to improvement, for the ones who wish to travel it, has many barriers set by the nature of the game and the ignorance of the community.

• The importance of DPS output is underrated, even by DD themselves, thus reducing players' incentive from improving this facet of their play.
  
• Without third party parsers, the game does very little to facilitate the improvement of DPS output.
  
• DDs are not held to the same standard as Tanks or Healers, further reducing their incentive to improve.

My intended message is to break these barriers by:

• Understanding and acknowledging the importance of DPS and incorporating it into your play.
  
• Utilizing the available tools that can facilitate the improvement of DPS, and do it in such a way that won't risk getting you banned.
  
• Holding yourself and your teammates to a higher standard, regardless of role. In a constructive way, of course.

[skaterger]

I still don't see how dps are not accountable for fights when Titan heart phase, ifrit ex nails, T4, T5 are all hard dps checks. If a raid wipes to any of the above mechanics, the fingers will be solely pointed to the dps. Maybe its not as obvious as a tank losing aggro or a healer not healing, but the collective dps has failed as a whole. And isn't there a saying like "you are only as good as your weakest member" or something like that.

I can kinda see where you are going with parsers, but the fact is most of the player community has not progressed to a point where parsers are necessary imho. Do you really think you need a parser for wp, ak ct or any of the hm dungeons? If SE decides to include parsers as a feature in the game, its just going to grief more players than it benefits. And serious raiders who are challenging end game content are going to get parsers one way or another, regardless of whether its allowed by SE or not.

[Viridiana]

I still don't see how dps are not accountable for fights when Titan heart phase, ifrit ex nails, T4, T5 are all hard dps checks. If a raid wipes to any of the above mechanics, the fingers will be solely pointed to the dps. Maybe its not as obvious as a tank losing aggro or a healer not healing, but the collective dps has failed as a whole. And isn't there a saying like "you are only as good as your weakest member" or something like that.

I can kinda see where you are going with parsers, but the fact is most of the player community has not progressed to a point where parsers are necessary imho. Do you really think you need a parser for wp, ak ct or any of the hm dungeons? If SE decides to include parsers as a feature in the game, its just going to grief more players than it benefits. And serious raiders who are challenging end game content are going to get parsers one way or another, regardless of whether its allowed by SE or not.

Except that I could fail Titan heart phase over and over again. Without a parser, I'm not going to be able to see who's playing sub-par and causing the group to fail. You can say that the group is only as good as its weakest member, but how fair is it to then deny the group one of the primary tools they can use to improve themselves?

As far as needing it for AK. . .I've seen some pretty poor dps in there. Fights where we wiped to the first boss because DPS couldn't kill the golems fast enough to even really damage the boss itself. Fights where the Wall just pushes us inexorably toward the back of the room. Fights where we finish as a fifth Catastrophe is being cast. These are all times that I would've loved to be able to tell the DPS what they were doing wrong, but it's somewhat beyond my ability to catch everything that my teammates are doing while simultaneously running all over the arena contending with mechanics.

And honestly, the idea that people don't need parsers purely because they're still on easy content seems odd to me. The easy content should be building you toward the harder content, in the same way that leveling up builds you to the level 50 content. Letting people get by with lousy rotations and having no tool to correct them with just means that when they get to difficult content they have to forget everything they know about their class and completely relearn it. I don't know about you, but I'd rather learn BLM in WP where I won't often have to move than learn it while also trying to learn Titan Extreme. . .

[skaterger]

snip

Back when I played Wow, someone in the raid would post dmg done/dps from recount into raid chat. After the raid, officers would also briefly analyze different parameters (dmg taken, number of times a particular skill is used etc) for boss fights and if someone wasn't performing up to expectations, they would pm them to have a chat about it. This is what I call constructive use of parsers. If SE can incorporate something like this into ffxiv I would be totally receptive of it as it would help fcs and statics so much for progression fights.

This is all well and good within the context of a grp of people playing together regularly but what if used in DF and PF which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

My point being, if its a straight up dps check and who isn't pulling their weight, its not hard to tell at all. The threat meter, while not 100% accurate can be used as a rough gauge.

Now imagine this expended to the duty finder in CT where there are 24 players. People were already abusing the ready check and vote abandon system? Can you imagine the fiasco if a parser was introduced?

[mythicrose]

...which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

Hmm...based on my own experiences over the last decade, I'll go with number 1. Nah...who am I kidding. Number two all the way.

[bokchoykn]

snip

I thought about what the game would be like if the game had a built-in parser, and I'm inclined to agree with you that the disadvantages would outweigh the benefits. Players would be more accountable and in turn play would improve, but at the same time, it would also facilitate toxic behavior like the stuff that you've mentioned. It would probably have a negative impact on casual players, creating an atmosphere of paranoia and toxicity.

Then I think about new/learning and unskilled tanks. Their performance is already constantly exposed to the rest of the group, just like a DD's would be if the game had a built-in parser. Except instead of low numbers, he also looks like a complete idiot when he screws up tanking. That's probably why tanks are so scarce. But I digress.

The OP was more directed at probably the upper 25% (guessing) of the game's players (in terms of skill, progression and intensity) who are actually doing end-game stuff that requires a higher standard of play.

If I was to implement an in-game parser in FFXIV, the data would be private and confidential to the specific player using it, with the option to share with teammates with the click of a button. If a teammate chooses to share with you, you can see his total damage dealt, how many of each skill he used, how many auto-attacks he landed, his critical hit rate, etc... just like you could see your own.

BTW: Threat meter is a bad way to show damage contribution. Quelling Strikes and Elusive Jump exist. Monks don't have any threat-management abilities. Plus, there are AoE situations and adds in every fight, while threat meter only shows the threat on each individual target. You can't tell who's carrying their weight on Ifrit EX nails using a threat meter.

[skaterger]

Trim

Ditto about the threat meter. I don't parse for every fight so its the only available real time approximation on who is pulling their weight or not. Its still useful for some fights though. Like you can see the threat meter on conflags to see which dps is slow to switch to conflag (if you are dying to fast conflags).

I'm curious though, if parsers are already being run in the background *hush hush*, then why the insistance it be made an in-game feature that all players have access to? It seems that this would cause more grief than anything else. If the point was to help the player improve, then having it run in game or in the background would make no difference. The information is still the same where you get it from.

Btw, thanks for keeping this discussion civil. And also, there seems to be a thread in GD about parsing too you might want to check it out.

[Viridiana]

This is all well and good within the context of a grp of people playing together regularly but what if used in DF and PF which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

My point being, if its a straight up dps check and who isn't pulling their weight, its not hard to tell at all. The threat meter, while not 100% accurate can be used as a rough gauge.

Now imagine this expended to the duty finder in CT where there are 24 players. People were already abusing the ready check and vote abandon system? Can you imagine the fiasco if a parser was introduced?

I can only really vouch for myself, in that I'd point out how to fix his rotation, probably a bit more bluntly than necessary but without calling names or anything. The people in my FC would likely do the same, and probably even be nicer about it. That said, the vast majority of the players are not people I can vouch for, and I know that an unfortunate number of them would do #2. On the other hand, #2 is harassment, which is a bannable offense, and I know that the GMs act on these things. I would almost be willing to deal with the stupid if it meant that we could clean up some of the more toxic members of the community. Especially if it means I can go to CT without being bombarded with childish infighting.

[skaterger]

Trim

I can agree with you on this definitely. The 2.5 sec gcd definitely trivializes the game somewhat. Maybe the rotation that I described is what I do personally, or at least what I strive to do. But still from what the op seems to be describing, it seems to be a fairly high level of play (selling ex primal runs) I reckon at least has to have every player at 85-90% of the class potential. And even though I don't have a lvl 50 dragoon yet, I believe it is not as simple as just HT, ID and Dis, to really max dps you need to time all your buffs with bfb and IR (power surge, life surge, plem, leg sweep, inv, jumps in that 20 sec window). I had to work it out at the start but now it becomes second nature for me. All I'm saying is that it might not work that way for everybody.

Let me give you an example from Wow (since I only started ff14 a month ago and played wow >5 yrs). There was this female healer in my guild who played a holy priest and the husband played a tank. We raided 10 man from BC to cata and for the most part of her journey as a healer, she was a terrible healer. She literally could not multitask. (If she had to move she could not heal, if she had to heal she could not move,she would always forget to heal the tank, shield the tank use cooldowns and basically have tunnel vision healing.) We tried every ways and means to help her and even had a gathering where we watched her play and told her what to do while we watched. She just could not heal to save her life but you could see she was really trying. I would imagine she would die a gruesome death if she tried titan hm in ffxiv. This is what I am saying. Not everyone has the same skill cap and it is arguably unfair to generalize everyone that does not meet your defined standard as bad when you have no idea of their background or playstyle.

And if you think blm can't screw up, obviously you have not played blm enough. I can't count the number of times I was 5 mana short of a swiftcast flare or 10 mana short of a blizzard 3 and I stand there looking like an idiot waiting for a transpose tick. Or maybe Im just "Bad" :P