SE's most difinitive statement yet on parsers

[Elven]

I still think it's a silly position, but it's less hypocritical than simply arguing for "fairness".

They could of said we don't want any 3rd party apps with our game and left it at that. And fairness has nothing to do with it, the PS3 is so far behind the others if anyone has a good reason to cry fairness it's them.

[Roris]

The thing is, parser program(s) are featuring this radar thing in their apps. While DPS parsers are just indeed e-peen after all and not harmful, people who use said parser also have access to this radar cheat. I don't think people would oppose to parsers as DPS meters only, but what I said previously.

It's a side effect of the game still not offering official mod support, so the third party parse program and API was designed to allow these types of addons that could very well be implemented officially and in game if there was actual support for them, some like Radar add features that were once in the game like mobs and NMs appearing on the mini map in 1.0. Although even when official mod support is added, whenever that is, I'm sure third party apps would still be developed so there's not much that can be done about that, but most people would move on to use the official supported tools.

[DoubleT]

The only way to catch this type of reading is illegally gaining access to the system and monitoring for it. Which mind you I said is illega

That's not exactly true. If SE were to put in a program that monitored what was going on in the background of your PC, they would just change the ToS an make you re-agree to it before being allowed to play, there-for legalizing anything they do. Diablo 3
makes you agree to the ToS again almost every single time there is an update, because they would make some sort of small change to the ToS, thus making it a new contract that you have to sign.

[Taban]

That's not exactly true. If SE were to put in a program that monitored what was going on in the background of your PC, they would just change the ToS an make you re-agree to it before being allowed to play, there-for legalizing anything they do. Diablo 3
makes you agree to the ToS again almost every single time there is an update, because they would make some sort of small change to the ToS, thus making it a new contract that you have to sign.

The EULA doesn't trump privacy law, just because they put it in the EULA doesn't mean they can do whatever they want to your PC. This was already gone over in a lawsuit with blizzard years ago, their Warden program used to do a much more invasive scan of your PC than it currently does, but Blizzard lost a lawsuit and now are only allowed to scan very specific things.

[Krr]

The most 'difinitive' statement 'yet'? The fact that you can get banned for using a parser is news so old it remembers what this game was like when the hardmode Primals actually gave what people considered weapon upgrades.

Officially, do not use a parser. Officially also, however, Square-enix will not violate your user privacy to scan your computer for 'illegal programs' and detects cheating by applications that send data rather than the fact that they read what the client already knows. So, the only way to get caught using a parser is if you're completely transparent about your need to judge someone else by a number attached to their character.

The material effect of the 'no parser' ruling and the methods used to enforce it is that players are unable to mandate their use for participation, and use them as open judgement tools or ways to overtly harass others.

Unofficially: People are using parsers because Square gives us terrible, terrible ways to monitor our DPS performance in any metric other than 'enrage timer didn't go off'. This makes it extremely difficult to engage in any meaningful self improvement, much less research potential good priorities or rotations or rules of thumb without vague and opaque wishy-washy theorycraft, especially with the opacity of many game mechanics.

A good example: I *still* meet Dragoons who do t6 and beyond and have several pieces of High Allagan and think that they should skip Chaos Thrust as long as someone else is applying Disembowel, because the net potency of DoTs and their mechanics in general aren't explained properly ingame.

[Tashigi]

Officially, do not use a parser. Officially also, however, Square-enix will not violate your user privacy to scan your computer for 'illegal programs' and detects cheating by applications that send data rather than the fact that they read what the client already knows. So, the only way to get caught using a parser is if you're completely transparent about your need to judge someone else by a number attached to their character.

The material effect of the 'no parser' ruling and the methods used to enforce it is that players are unable to mandate their use for participation, and use them as open judgement tools or ways to overtly harass others.

Unofficially: People are using parsers because Square gives us terrible, terrible ways to monitor our DPS performance in any metric other than 'enrage timer didn't go off'. This makes it extremely difficult to engage in any meaningful self improvement, much less research potential good priorities or rotations or rules of thumb without vague and opaque wishy-washy theorycraft, especially with the opacity of many game mechanics.

A good example: I *still* meet Dragoons who do t6 and beyond and have several pieces of High Allagan and think that they should skip Chaos Thrust as long as someone else is applying Disembowel, because the net potency of DoTs and their mechanics in general aren't explained properly ingame.

All of the above.
Also, the DRG example is something I've sadly experienced more than I can remember, specially in T6 and T7. Once you've played every DPS class in end game content, you easily pick up bad DPS quickly and easily.

[Amberyl]

You are labeling all mods, including quality of life mods, as the same.
I can't take you seriously at this point.

There's no such thing as a 'quality of life' mod. There's intended, and then there's not. There is no in-between.

[Yahavage]

Parsing is so ebil. Fancy wanting a numerical representation of your overall damage in a fight and then using that to determine whether or not your can do better. Silly buggers. Obviously just going in and punching stuff and hoping you're doing those rotations correctly is the way forward

[Gardthorne]

There's no such thing as a 'quality of life' mod. There's intended, and then there's not. There is no in-between.

Parsing is a basic function that's existed and been required at high level play since this genre has existed. If it isn't intended then it's broken and users will fix it like they always have.

[Tashigi]

There's no such thing as a 'quality of life' mod. There's intended, and then there's not. There is no in-between.

That was a general statement and yes there is; can be found in many other games. Skyrim comes to mind almost instantly.
Unless we're mixing the term up.