It's official Parsers are illegal in FFXIV

[Asael]

The absence of parsers IS bad. Maybe not at the casual level, but this game is supposed to appeal to players who play at all levels of intensity, is it not?

The importance and usefulness of parsers for the purpose of evaluation and self-improvement (and the improvement of your teammates) cannot be understated.

Indeed.

The problem surrounding parsers at the moment are people who abuse its function to belittle or degrade other players in game. This thread's second post is pretty indicative of just such a thing as I pointed out in my previous post. The parser is a pretty valuable tool not only for self improvement, but for locating and resolving player problems in a party. Lately I've been noticing more and more high ilvl geared players who have dps values that aren't where they should be which denotes a rotational problem. This is becoming a big problem as people are leveling to 50 very quickly but never take the time to read the tool tips as to how their stats and abilities work, do rotation research, nor ask questions to people who are experienced with that job. It would become extremely difficult to find and fix these issues without a parser available (especially in the 8 man raids).

[raelgun]

hoping this gets over turned, players have a right if the want to help those not good enough, and its our right to know whos not up other players levels, but its also the players right if they dont want to help, you cant force people in either manner, calling out someones low dps, isnt any different to the 2 mistakes your out PF groups, your being called out, people are mentioning you dieing to that landslide over and over, and you are asked to be removed from the group because they have lost faith in you and know you cant help them get the kill, just as dps parsers assess the same situation when it comes to dps checks.
people do realise, the more restrictive SE gets, the more people will make sure they stay grouped up together with like skilled players even more.
Im hoping the playerbase makes a lot of noise on this, parsers are a good thing.

also, im wondering if its even a good idea for SE to ban thousands of players, this is far more common use, SE will back down from this at some point, its not in the best interest to ban thousands of players perma

[bokchoykn]

At your level of intensity, you shouldn't need a parser to watch what is going on... As a tank, you should be able to watch what is going on around you. And while it is much easier to see a bad tank or healer, it really isn't difficult to find a player lacking in skill.

Not true. Having a parser has improved my play as well as my FFXIV experience considerably.

• It has allowed me to find ways to improve my damage output, both as a tank and as a DPS class. For example, I found that I did a few too many Twin Snakes and not enough True Strikes as a Monk, which results in a DPS loss. I might not have noticed this flaw in my play without a parser. Being conscious of it, I fixed this problem shortly afterwards.
  
• It has allowed me to find ways to improve my teammates. I noticed our Storm's Path was sometimes not up when the boss did his big damage AoE spell. I checked the parse and noticed that our Warrior used Butcher's Block way too much. Being a Warrior main, I gave him some tips which he was very appreciative of. It made him a better player.
  
• It allows me to identify exceptional DPS players. I don't berate bad DPS players but I try to surround myself with like-minded players who are very good at this game. Parsing in PF runs lets me know who these people are.
  
• It helps me study and figure out boss mechanics. For example, a boss mechanic dealt 8000 damage to one of my teammates. The same spell did 4000 damage when it hit two players. I used this to determine that the spell splits the damage evenly amongst targets hit. This was key to defeating said boss.
  
• It tells me what percentage HP a boss is at. The game doesn't tell you the boss' HP% but boss behaviors change at certain HP% points. This helps me understand the boss and come up with ways to defeat it.
  
• It helps me find accuracy caps. It's very easy to not notice a missed attack. A parser allows for me to determine whether or not I miss at various accuracy levels.

The list goes on and on. There are many positive benefits of having a parser that don't involve yelling at people for having bad DPS.

[Wolf_Gang]

SE has been saying Parsers are against the ToS since Day 1. This is not new.

It's under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. Unless they release their own API for metrics, they will never approve parsers.
That being said, it is impossible for SE to tell if a parser is running unless they had direct access to your computers memory stack.

[Ninix]

This is a really dumb thread. Parsers have *always* been against the ToS. When Square Enix says "no third party programs" they can't make exceptions for particular pieces of software because that would seem like an endorsement of said software, which they will definitely not do.

Square Enix will not ban people simply for using parsers. The client doesn't even bother to check for them (nor any other third party software for that matter, which is why bots run rampant), so they have no way of knowing if you're using one in the first place unless you specifically say so in-game. They will ban you if you go into a group and harass someone and say something like "ur shit m8 ur parsing 120 below me kill yourself" and someone else reports you. But if you use one and only share the results in VoIP or in private chat with your party, nothing will happen. This is exactly the same situation as Windower from FFXI, by the way, something that was against the ToS but a ton of people used anyway with no issues.

A large portion of the endgame playerbase uses them because believe it or not, they are incredibly useful for many things other than e-peen stroking and harassment. And it's not exactly healthy for your game for you to go around banning a huge percentage of the players who are most heavily invested in it (ie. the endgame hardcore/semi-hardcore raiding population).

[blowfin]

This thread is beyond silly, from all accounts these groups were pos-hacking, nothing at all to do with parsers.

Parsers are like fight club. Don't talk about the goddamn parser!

[Tashigi]

One step forward, two step backwards.
A Square Enix tradition. Nothing new here.

[ReplicaX]

The real reason for that topic.

※As of April 1, 2014 at 1:00 a.m., only two parties have legitimately completed “The Second Coil of Bahamut - Turn 3”. Game data since then has been closely monitored.

aka illegitimate practices involving the alteration of game data. As someone mentioned POS hacking. A form on altering the client game data.

This is a form of cheating and the players involved should have been banned not suspended.

Rest is an already known general reminder regarding 3rd party tools/programs.

[Gormogon]

snip

It isn't. Parsers don't discriminate between casuals and hardcore and there's people without parsers that can out do people with em.

Mastery of this game doesn't depend on those factors. You don't need rocket science to be able to read.

[Luzaf]

To me a parser breeds toxic elitism. It segregates. People will want to stick with their own types (as in skill, dps, rotations etc). The high end do not wish to be caught up with the low or middle end players. Perhaps it might be towards the progress of the run or for some other reason. Some may disagree with me and claim that a parser is for self benefit to improve oneself. Rotations etc. Well I'm not disagreeing but I've seen parsers mainly lean towards elitism. It's only natural among humans to want to be within the best of the best. It's just my honest opinion. I do ask for forgiveness if I have offended anyone out there.