SE's most difinitive statement yet on parsers

[Bixby]

Here's a wrench I don't think I've seen thrown into this conversation yet: how useful parsers can be for finding bugs and balance issues. Blizzard is constantly patching weird, obscure bugs in spell interactions and making small tweaks to balance because players running parsers find things that testing misses. Any developer worth their job will tell you real-world tests are going to find stuff that your testing environments won't. Users will always do things developers and designers don't think of. And letting users have parsers makes that worlds better. Everyone feels their DPS or threat or HPS or whatever is too low or too high, or swears they're missing when they shouldn't be or that an ability isn't quite doing what it says on the box.

Without parsers, it becomes incredibly difficult to make the case for any of that, because it's just vague forum noise with no real data to go on, and likely to be drowned out by "It's fine, shut up." With a player base armed with parsers, you get enough actual data to see whether it's true or not.

Without parsers, you end up with years of "ROFLDRG" because everyone assumes their DPS is crap, and there's never anything solid to make them see otherwise.

[Staris]

This is what he does. He immediately went to say "Seems that's all you pro parsing people can ever resort to." which falls into the "You guys never get what I say anyway" type of stuff he always bring sup when you corner him with a good argument.



That's not always the problem though. For example, when you're tackling turn 8 or 9 everyone in your party may look to be doing pretty well based on your hate meters. The tanks outstripping everyone nicely so they are holding hate fine, and everyone in the party is right in line with one another (exceptions going to hate reduction moves), but in the end you just aren't even coming close to the DPS check of the fight. The team sits stumped. Wondering "Why can't we beat this? Everyone's hate meters seem to be properly in line!" but once a parser gets thrown at the battle it becomes clear. Everyone in the group is equally below the thresholds required to win the battle. Everyone needs to step it up because no one is succeeding.

See the entire "threat meter" argument assumes that if you are all equal then you're all doing alright, but that's a flaw. It only works when at least 1 person is absolutely killing damage so that everyone else has a baseline amount of threat to strive for. When you all fail the entire system falls completely apart. It is a flawed method. Perfectly fine for low end content, but completely useless for end game content.

Think you missed my point completely.

I don't need a parser to figure out an ideal rotation. To test it sure it is helpful, but I'm confident enough in myself (and my team) to be able to figure it out with just the combat log and theory. We have also never hit a dps check in our progression in this entire game. I don't even know what the enrages look like on turn 6-9. Do turn 6 and 7 even have hard enrages?

Now when we pug someone for some primal or ST or something, this is when we can easily judge based on abiltiies cast/threat/ect

It's really not that hard to tell when someone is terrible.

Someone doing 5% worse may be impossible to tell.... But people do far far worse than you could imagine. I have always called people out when it annoys me enough, and I have not needed, will never need a parser to do so.

Anything someone can do with a 3rd party parser, a person can do with a calculator and a pad of paper and the combat log. It just takes more time/effort.

This whole argument is just bad players hating on other bad player for using tools they are too lazy to use. Its funny.

[ispano]

Although we will continue to monitor game data to ensure that similar illegitimate practices are not being used, we would like to remind players that using third-party programs, parsers, or other tools to conduct actions players would not normally be able to do in the game is a violation of the Terms of Service, and will be dealt with strict disciplinary action.

Players who discover any confirmed cheats should, under no circumstances, exploit or disseminate such information. Instead, we ask that players file a report by using the in-game command [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

Source: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...513.1392924972

Fixed that for you. Their wording here is using any of these tools, and even they consider them tools, to do things you can't do normally. And a parser alone does not do that. Some current parsers out there however, have addons or plugins that do allow you to do things you shouldn't be able to do. But the parser itself does not do such things.

The last few pages have been, "lolwut" from the anti-parser/cheating accusers. Although it was already said here it is again.

Currently:
1) ToS forbids third-party programs
2) A third-party program has the ability to do parsing
3) Parsing is cheating

Add-on support
1) ToS forbids third-party programs
2) A third-party program has the ability to do parsing
2b) SE has a first-party program with the ability to do parsing
3) Parsing is cheating

See how that makes sense? Get it? Got it? Good.

Well, it won't actually be first party. It will still be made by a third party, but will be an addon instead of an external program. But yeah, will still allow parsing even though it's "cheating" according to these people. Really kind of funny.

Unfortunately dots do not get recorded in either the log or combat window

Actually they do show on screen. It's just all your dots lumped together where the problem lies, in addition to everyone's dots ticking at the same time, making it hard to see.

[Exstal]

The last few pages have been, "lolwut" from the anti-parser/cheating accusers. Although it was already said here it is again.

Currently:
1) ToS forbids third-party programs
2) A third-party program has the ability to do parsing
3) Parsing is cheating

Add-on support
1) ToS forbids third-party programs
2) A third-party program has the ability to do parsing
2b) SE has a first-party program with the ability to do parsing
3) Parsing is cheating

See how that makes sense? Get it? Got it? Good.

[Staris]

The last few pages have been, "lolwut" from the anti-parser/cheating accusers. Although it was already said here it is again.

Currently:
1) ToS forbids third-party programs
2) A third-party program has the ability to do parsing
3) Parsing is cheating

Add-on support
1) ToS forbids third-party programs
2) A third-party program has the ability to do parsing
2b) SE has a first-party program with the ability to do parsing
3) Parsing is cheating

See how that makes sense? Get it? Got it? Good.

except they fail to acknowledge you can manually parse the combat log with pen/paper. (It exports to a damn file lol)

[IngMae]

Think you missed my point completely.

I don't need a parser to figure out an ideal rotation. To test it sure it is helpful, but I'm confident enough in myself (and my team) to be able to figure it out with just the combat log and theory. We have also never hit a dps check in our progression in this entire game. I don't even know what the enrages look like on turn 6-9. Do turn 6 and 7 even have hard enrages?

Now when we pug someone for some primal or ST or something, this is when we can easily judge based on abiltiies cast/threat/ect

It's really not that hard to tell when someone is terrible.

Someone doing 5% worse may be impossible to tell.... But people do far far worse than you could imagine. I have always called people out when it annoys me enough, and I have not needed, will never need a parser to do so.

T6 doesn't have a timed/hard enrage as after super slug raffy gets stacks, if she gets 10 stacks you wipe. So while its not a 'timed' enrage, it still is a enraged mechanic if you choose to burn the boss.

T7 has a hard enrage timer.

T8 has a hard enrage timer.

Still working on T9 so I'll not talk about what I don't know.

Oh btw, after you finish turn 8 please come and tell me about not meeting dps checks ^^

You can thank someone who parsed it for knowing what the dps check is for those fights.

All I see from the anti-parser crowd is " its against TOS" so its illegal.... well killing is illegal, and cars can kill people so should all cars be banned? Shades of grey people.

And now we have a car analogy, just waiting for Hitler to pop up so we can stick a fork in this thread

[Kaethra]

Interesting fact, it appears Lady Amandine of Haukke Manor has 75,000 hp. But like I said, they won't report those other threads I linked, so there's no danger of posting such info here. Course there's no way to prove how I arrived at that number. Maybe I used a parser, maybe I added up all the numbers in the log file (manual parsing), or perhaps I did a couple of 300ish damage hits and used the percentage in game to arrive at that number (another method of parsing, though rough).

All three methods are wrong by the people in this thread. All three methods can be used to determine who's not pulling their weight and can be harassed for it. All three methods can be used to the same end.

I'll tell you what is more unfair than any method of parsing. My 17 button mmo gaming mouse. One hand is on the WASD keys and will never waver and the other can control targeting with the movement of a wrist and the thumb has access to not just 12, 24, but all 36 hotkeys across 3 hotbars. All with the ease of having the skill to use a Numberpad without looking at it (or adding machine for you older peeps like me). Talk about an advantage over controllers. You thought regular mouse and KB users had a slight advantage...

Point is, there's much worse things than parsers that are legit. And no one's proved that parsers are even disallowed except for a probably mistranslated off handed remark. You want to really prove to us that parsers aren't allowed? I'll tell you how to do it. I'll even do Half the work for you. Go to these threads, and report them. They aren't discussing parsing, they are parsing. Everything they arrived at has been through parsing. The fact those threads exist do every bad thing that you all have brought up. They make the game easier, they tell us how to play content without slugging through it first, they give us ammo to throw at bad players. If you don't do this, then you are a liar, and don't even believe in what you have been saying all along.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...otation-Reborn
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Temple-Reborn
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...age-Calculator

[Sebazy]

except they fail to acknowledge you can manually parse the combat log with pen/paper. (It exports to a damn file lol)

Unfortunately dots do not get recorded in either the log or combat window

[Sebazy]

Actually they do show on screen. It's just all your dots lumped together where the problem lies, in addition to everyone's dots ticking at the same time, making it hard to see.

Aye, they only show as flying text, but the numbers never make it further than that, they don't appear in the log or combat window and thus aren't really parseable via traditional math alone. Disable flying text in the options and dots won't get seen by a parser for example.

Ps sorry for the double post, not sure how I managed that!

*edit* wait nm, space-time continuum getting torn asunder by historic quoting!

[Clavaat]

All I see from the anti-parser crowd is " its against TOS" so its illegal.... well killing is illegal, and cars can kill people so should all cars be banned? Shades of grey people.

And now we have a car analogy, just waiting for Hitler to pop up so we can stick a fork in this thread

You're not looking hard enough. The thread OP is about what SE has stated in regards to this. It is third party software, it is bannable, end of story. You don't have to be "anti-parser" to see that. I wouldn't mind tracking my DPS, but seeing as how I can get banned if caught, I won't take the risk. It's that simple. If you choose to, good luck, don't get caught. Debating the morality of a parser is so pointless...it doesn't matter what the intent is anymore.