The Real Problem with Parsers

[Viridiana]

I said that people with medical issues restricting them can't get over their medical issues. It's not my problem if you ignore the "restrictions" part. But I guess according to you, if someone can't walk because they're medically paralyzed, they're just not trying hard enough.

Nope, you asked if they could improve and then denied that they could improve even though they can, even if they're doing the best they can with the currently available gear, because their gear can at some point improve.

So when the next currency comes out, my alternate classes that I'm not gearing any higher than upgraded Law will be on an equal footing as somebody who's been Savage raiding this whole time immediately and who will presumably continue to raid?

If you grind out some uncapped Eso, you'll be at i200 compared to a full time raider's i210, give or take. That's pretty nearly equal footing. And since even un-upgraded Law is enough to grind Fractal (which would have Eso at this point if they hold to the pattern), it shouldn't be hard to grind up some Eso. Oh, and at the same time you'll be getting the new currency, which (if the pattern holds) will be stronger than i210 and can help alleviate the small remaining gap.

I'm just going to start ignoring every time you say, "Well, X can be a source of abuse so they shouldn't be doing it either." It's still not a valid argument for your case, so I'll stop wasting time on it.

Either the mere potential for abuse is sufficient grounds to not implement something, or it isn't. I'm only asking for consistency. Now, if they want to quantify that potential, that would be another matter. But they seem unwilling to do so.

Are you really stooping to semantic arguments? Was it not clear enough that I meant specific numbers? Do I need to literally spell out absolutely everything I say for you?

Arguing against hyporbole is arguing semantics. You realize this, right? Because...

No, hyperbole isn't an effective arguing tool in any case. Would you take me seriously if I said that parsers would turn everyone into drooling elitist lunatics because it's clear I'm using hyperbole?

I would take it in context and try to determine if you're being literal. Assuming the context makes it reasonably clear, I'd probably respond to what you most likely meant. Possibly with a sarcastic reference to the hyperbole itself, because sarcasm is fun.

And again, the people that may try to help aren't the ones they're worried about. It's the ones that won't try to help and will just make someone feel bad.

And everyone else is suffering for the minority. Yay.

It does if you're the one creating the party.

I guess if I start keeping a journal or something. Because in the average PF party people seem to perform about as well as the average DF party. So accountability would have to come from a tracker of some sort to remember the bad people from prior PFs. But that seems like an aweful lot of work for not a lot of payout, because PF is still random.

Nope, not really. Not when others don't think it's my duty to give them assistance.

I have to assume you mistyped this and mean "Not when others think it's my duty to give them assistance." Or something? Because the response as typed makes no sense. But it's nice to know that you have no feeling of responsibility for the areas you inhabit.

Not at all. The state the game was in then will be unaffected by whether or not you have a parser now.

It's the state the game is still in. At no point has SE stopped putting DPS checks in even non-endgame content, and at no point has the player base developed competence. You can't pretend that the unbroken chain leading back to beta is irrelevent to the current discussion.

Maybe people shouldn't try to do the hardest content with random people.

You really think that Ravana is the hardest content in the game? Or is this hyperbole? Because I think I remember your saying something about hyperbole being an ineffective argument tactic...

You said you weren't going to get far without numbers. You don't need numbers when you can tell that someone's doing lower DPS.

Some people will listen to numbers. More options good. Less options bad.

Or maybe they're considering scale and that the scale of people harassing over titles is less than those that would harass over DPS. But no, considering the reasonable extent of potential harassment for new features couldn't have possibly crossed their mind, hm?

Well, so far they're not showing promise at assessing risk/reward, if tells in dungeons are any indication. At this point I'd re-assess if they showed their work.

Okay. And that's you. They disagree. It's your job to prove them wrong, not shout that they're wrong.

Or they can at least explain their reasoning. By which I mean their actual risk/reward assessment, not just their conclusion. At least then we can debate the assessment.

Which would almost assuredly change if they changed their policy.
Which doesn't prove anything about how many of those would be elitists.
Which would almost assuredly change if they changed their policy.

Hence numbers seven and 8...This really isn't hard. You take data you have and extrapolate it out to data you don't have to get some idea of what it would look like. This is really, really basic. It's not an exact science, but it's still useful.

Since 7 and 8 are hypotheticals in themselves, would you accept if they said that 75% of people would change into jerks?

At least then we would have a point to start from to try to argue down from, since 75% seems rather unlikely.

These hypotheticals can't be used to adjust because they're complete unknowns. Nobody will admit that they'll turn into a jerk if the policy changes, and obviously nobody can know 8 except a hivemind of the players that don't report them. Maybe 1,000 harassments go unreported daily. Maybe 100 do. Maybe 0 do. Maybe 10,000 do. You're expecting them to prove a hypothetical by weighting an estimate with another hypothetical.

Funny thing. I listed 8 as an assumption, but it's actually possible to assess this with at least fair accuracy. Send a link out to the player base asking if they've suffered any harassment they haven't reported. You won't get everyone to answer, but you can, once again, extrapolate out from the responses you get.

Again, you're not privy to their reasoning

That's kinda the problem I'm getting at, here.

And they don't owe you their reasoning, because they make the decisions and not you.

And I don't owe it to them to not say their reasoning is bunk. >_>

Subjective hypotheticals. If they suggest that 75% of people may turn into elitist jerks, would you accept that? Or would you still say that they're unreasonable? If they said 50%, how about then? Won't you really just say they're unreasonable, period, until they agree with you?

Honestly, I think 30% is probably the extreme upper bound of reasonable, but at least if they said 75% I'd understand how they came to their conclusion.

[DestinovaTrueblade]

As a sometimes healer I'd be less worried about harassment from parsers, and more worried about dps ignoring mechanics and standing in aoe's because they know everyone can see their dps, and the numbers are all that matter. Either out of fear of being too low and being kicked, or so they can brag about their 'leet' numbers.

I have seen in other games 'I don't care if I gave the healer an aneurysm, I survived and the mob is dead so suck it'

Or similar statements.

Or it might inspire them to stay alive more, you do 0 dps while dead after all.

[Aomine1992]

I loved that you posted this. Unfortunately, most people against parsers will probably skip watching that video and continue to exaggerate the harrassment. People really are paranoid if you think just because you're 50 dps under someone else you're going to be vote kicked. People get vote kicked for not even bothering to try, not because you're slightly behind the other person. The only time I've vote kicked anyone was because they were literally doing equal dps as a fresh 50 in 2.0, while having plenty of i200 gear, or they just simply can't be bothered to (self admitting) stop chatting to their FC or linkshell and do more than auto attacking.

What video did you watch cause this did not support parsers it showed how even with the damage meters no one even bothered to say anything....this video was more about the community ignoring things like this and there being no penalty in the matter not that parsers will save you from this situation...

[Waliel]

Meanwhile, if we reread what I said, I specifically said "Medical issues restricting them". So yes, if a medical issue is restricting them, they cannot magically heal it just so they can git gud enough for you. Maybe try reading every word.

I said that people with medical issues restricting them can't get over their medical issues. It's not my problem if you ignore the "restrictions" part. But I guess according to you, if someone can't walk because they're medically paralyzed, they're just not trying hard enough.

If you're physically or mentally incapable to do over 700 DPS because of something medical, why are you playing content where it's not even close to being good enough?

Depends if there's a hard cap even on edited posts.

Twenty a day.

What video did you watch cause this did not support parsers it showed how even with the damage meters no one even bothered to say anything....this video was more about the community ignoring things like this and there being no penalty in the matter not that parsers will save you from this situation...

And the main point of the opposition seems to be that all hell will break loose were parses added. As you can see in that video, no one cared one bit even if you stood in every aoe and never attacked anything (except that one rogue who he was using /follow on) as long as stuff got done.

[Hellzon]

I can see a future where class "x" won't be accept in a party because it lacks dps.
Let me see if it's the player fault... Oh my God! No, it's not. Balacing a game is really hard and those things will always happen and parses will become a big problem. We'll also see some classes disappearing. The same as in wow, where we used to have a lot of shamans, when the last expansion arrived they disappeared. I kept playing a shaman but to find a group that allowed me to play as shaman melee was really tough, then they buffed shaman and everybody started playing it again and Rogues disappeared. No, it's not funny!

[La_Bluegirl]

What video did you watch cause this did not support parsers it showed how even with the damage meters no one even bothered to say anything...

Exactly? This is also from the "ever so toxic" WoW. The main argument everyone throws around, that is anti-parser, is how elitist everyone will be once you can see everyone's numbers. It shows that the average pug really doesn't give a crap about your dps, so stop thinking you're gonna get kicked out of every single DF dungeon you step into and allow the people that would like to use a tool (ps3/ps4/anyone who hasn't downloaded it on pc) to finally do so to improve.

[spelley]

I can see a future where class "x" won't be accept in a party because it lacks dps.

This game is significantly more balanced than WOW (or most MMOs). DPS numbers are pretty normalized amongst roles, with even the "low" end within a role being with the "skill margin" most of the time (a player really eeking out DPS as a PLD will probably out DPS a DRK who is only average or not really trying). Part of this is because there are no "specs" so there aren't as many variables which makes one more "gimped" than the other.

As an aside, I have never seen someone kicked for "too low DPS" in anything aside from Bismarck EX, because they literally were holding the group back. This was fairly obvious even without a parser. When something is a DPS check, a DPS doing poorly is just as bad a Tank who is not holding aggro or a Healer not keeping the tank alive, but is nearly invisible without either a lot of experience in what to look out for or a parser.

[Niryco]

In my opinion if parsers are allowed, the forums would become a numbers to numbers discussion. Job/classes complaints would be about which class does lesser numbers then another and threads beating each other up because they can't do a set amount of numbers. Parsers would become the meta of justifications for nerfs and buffs, for changes and even QOL. No i didn't come to this game playing numbers, i came to it because it provided many more types of content outside of numbers. That being said parsers would probably have a minimal effect in-game, i mean no one bothers to really explain if someone is doing bad/not pulling their weight and you don't have all the time in the world to teach a player their rotations if they can't hit their numbers.

[XionAvalonArcadia]

I think Yoshi said it best "Git Imdugud!" but in all seriousness, parsers are not a problem if people use it as a tool to measure improvement. You can know where you need to work on and what phase. If you want to see content, NOTHING is holding you back except yourself. Savage is pretty tough, how do you see this content? Either run normal mode or better yourself to experience the tough stuff.

[Hellzon]

This game is significantly more balanced than WOW (or most MMOs).

Man, this game is not balanced at all, they work faster than wow, that's all. Let's remember dragoon in the past, Monk and astrologian in 3.0.Not talking about "fixes" Machinist and Dark Knight received earlier 3.0 and finally we can talk about whm in 3.0.7. I don't think balance will ever exist. Of course we don't have specs and it helps a lot, not many things to fix, but it does exist. That's the reason they are always working and changing skills/cds, etc.