Damage Meters

[CYoung187]

People are bad because they just don't care, no amount of colors or numbers is going to change that. All these complaints about bad dps are getting to be pointless. I have still never met a player that said "my dps is bad and I don't know why, help me" The bad ones are mostly the silent "IDGAF" types. Bad players never have a shortage of reasons to justify the badness.

Throw red lights at them telling them they suck will cause them to unsub. Which might be what we want, but not what SE wants.

[Terribad]

Snip

You're going off an example as IF the player cared bads do not care, that's why they're bads! (I know I said casual earlier but real casuals are not bad, that was a mistake on my part) There are SO many resources already available the question "how to get information to improve" should never be asked with good ol' Google. IF the person cared, they would Google, ask FC mates, LS mates, practice AND watch videos. I've seen people that actually cared come in a dungeon and go "This is my first time as this class, please let me know if I do something wrong". Those type of people that want to improve will have their jobs down pact by time they hit end game(which is where most of the complaints are coming from).

I think what would improve the problem is to have that natural gap/separation that every MMO has. With this game the bads,casuals, average players, hardcores, and elitist are all together in a mixing pot. Usually certain "gates" removes the bads OR makes them improve, we don't have that here.

[Dante_V]

Today some stranger parsed me on Cuff of the Father and I was lowest DPS (I was mostly focusing on AoE while single targetting Dolls and Gobwalker things). I didn't want to do the walker because I thought I was contributing but he called me useless. If I was bottom of the barrel in my gear then I probably was.

Anyway the moral of the story is it really broke my confidence.

This situation really reminded me how awful it is to have to hear that from someone else.

I'm pretty sure I could tighten up my damage with some sort of visual aid. I've done it in other MMOs.

Flying blind I confuse myself.

This is the struggle. As someone who plays on PS4 I understand your desire to have the tools to make yourself better. I thankfully have PC friends that are available to help me parse and because of this I've been able to refine my rotation thru practice and feedback to be able to do substantial amounts of dps. I've never been scrutinized for low dps but I can say that I can completely relate to wanting to see your numbers or have a tool to view your damage without having to use a stop watch and calculator. I can say without a doubt that denying users a personal damage meter is by and far something that creates a huge amount of disparity between the hardcore crowd and the casual crowd. Creating dps checks that necessitate players perform within the top 5% of their potential ability while completely denying them any means to reference their numbers is like trying to drive the speed limit without a speedometer.

The arguments "it won't make a difference" (this is completely unsubstantiated and objectively false,) and that it "creates a potential environment for judgement and harassment" (this is already happening and is exacerbated by the absence of information for self improvement) aren't actually arguments at all. They are merely opinionated talking points with no evidence to back them. The simple fact of the matter is that basic feedback to input is an integral part and necessity to learning ANYTHING. The current environment is one of disparity because players are denied access to the tools necessary to improve themselves while others have access to them freely. This most certainly leads to people not being able to improve and harassment surrounding that context as can be seen in the quote above because it NECESSITATES that another player say something about your low damage in order for you to have any idea about it. This often leads to other confrontations while still completely denying the person wishing to advance any tools to help them do so. This also means that in order to help someone without a parser you have to risk breaching TOS or be reported for harassment in some cases. Not only is this unjust it's staggeringly ignorant. It literally perpetuates frustration and confrontation between players while creating a subsets of privileged and unprivileged players because the ONLY way for someone to know their performance is to have it told to them by a third party.

Imagine if we had to approach other things in life in this manner.

"Oh you have chocolate on your face? Well you can't look in the mirror to wipe it off and you have to wait for someone else to tell you about it to know if it's there. And we all know that if you could see your face you wouldn't clean it off anyway because you're too lazy and giving you the ability to see yourself would lead to you harassing other for the way they look."

If that sounds ridiculous that's because it is and the epic amount of Orwellian doublethink necessary to validate the argument against PERSONAL & PRIVATE damage meters is second to none. The people who make arguments against them are almost always basing those arguments on unsubstantiated opinion or flat out informal fallacies as every "potential outcome" claimed by the naysayers is completely void of any real testable or objective proof and evidence to back their claims. Meanwhile the understanding of input to feedback in the context of learning and improvement is not only a scientifically proven necessity to education, it is the very foundation of it's existence. The current environment promoted by the lack of damage meters is one where the blind lead the blind while a privileged set of players become the gatekeepers of fundamental objective feedback necessary for improvement.

I 100% support the implementation of personal and private damage meter WITH NUMBERS so that a player can have the tools needed for self improvement and I would even support the implementation of an option for VOLUNTARY number sharing with these damage meters in preformed groups for static raid teams to allow for team improvement. "Would you like to share your damage number with the group for this duty? --------> Yes or No

These are not hard things to implement and their foundations are already built into the game thru the battle log. If the developers want to help stifle harassment and promote community and player progression then allowing players the tools to improve is the biggest step they can make.

Lest we just walk around Eorzea blindfolded, poking things with sticks and have others ask "why are you doing that??? Git gud!"

Anyhow sorry for the long rant this is just something I feel very passionate about. I hope everyone has a good day!

[Tarta]

(Wow a lot of replies, ok let's get through them!)

In regards to your OP, it seems like a decent idea. However, I can already see players putting out bad dps because they don't care sneaking in to tight dps check content. They won't share their parses obviously because they'd get kicked, and the rest of the party still won't be able to tell who is not pulling their share of DPS without using a 3rd party tool. So that big issue still remains.

That is the case now yes, for the immediate addition as we have a 2 : 6 : 2 ratio trained and reared with that axis of thinking. However, the system should be organic and be involved in the overall experience to help nurture the players rather than nurture their current state of affair. It's possible, you just have to pool your ideas and implement natural progression tools (think Megaman X. Natural, organic, and by end game player would ostensibly be much better at the game)

[Tarta]

The system would be a nightmare, < < snip > >
Random Duty finder Joe doesn't care about you or your colour coded DPS charts.

This is why I also mentioned patterns/shapes/whatever to grade the output.
We are in a mindset that's restrictive at the moment as players are immersed in this very negative environment, and nurtured inside it (without interception, encouraged I would say) to be lazy. Random DPS Joe may be not caring, but if he has leveled through the game with something that helps him, he may not be as antipathic about the idea as he is at the moment.
We aren't trying to change people overnight, we're trying to find a solution for the greater issue (while retaining playerbase).

[Tarta]

< < insert self experience story> >

See people?! That! Human beings do not want to feel bad. We're wired to want to feel good. Sorry for your plight Ayuhra. If you need help with your DPS check out the DPS section of forums under your class and see the links/comments for help with your rotation. You can also ask around, people are not as uptight and bristly as the forum makes em out to me.
This is the current solution available until there's something else implemented, but it shows that I am correct to a point, and that there is hope guys.

[Tarta]

< snip > I really like the color codes idea. But I'm thinking the colors might work best with red as 'more DPS than needed', orange as just right, yellow as a bit low, and green as not enough - like the enmity meter works.

Hmm that's a good idea, it would focus on a more casual approach to the fights, where if you put yourself in "OVERDRIVE!" you're helping out, but it's not "needed". Actually it may even be better this way, thinking player retention-wise, less stress. Thanks Makeda!!

[Tarta]

The thing is, a lot of people who don't care about optimizing their play also won't care about a system like this. I have friends who've played since open beta and still can't name a surprising number of the skills they use on their main class. These things just aren't important to a lot of people, as annoying as that may be for us minmaxing, theorycrafting types.

That said, I'm all for have some kind of DPS measurement system ingame if only to make my own life easier.

Exactly, the average player doesn't care about such a system. That's because there isn't anything there to make them care about it. I'm trying to think of a way to approach the issue organically within the confines of FFXIV UI/content so that even if a little, they have something to make them care a bit, engage them a bit. There's nothing to lose if you do it right, you could only improve the community overall.

[Doki]

Would just lead to PF groups "if you are not in green, you will be kicked"

[Hayward]

There is no such thing as self improvement anymore. We're all winners, we all get a trophy, we all get told we're doing great because we're having fun.

Might I invite you to Target Field in Minneapolis so you can have any one of the seats there with that nonsense you're selling?