The Real Problem with Parsers

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Right, and with personal parsers with optional sharing, you see immediately who wants to hide their DPS so you get a better idea of how receptive they are to criticism. Sounds like a benefit to personal parsers with optional sharing, to me. You get a better idea of whether the person will be willing to listen to criticism or if they'll just ignore what you say anyways.

This exactly would create the kind of jerk you're so "anti-jerk" about, though? You'd get two responses when they'd see someone hiding it: Don't do anything or Kicking from the party. This would be true for public parsers too: Players can choose not to do anything or kick from the party. So what added value does it have aside from creating the same kind of toxicity you mentioned in another post?

I have, at points, said that making a run take longer and outright making it impossible are different situations. I am against kicking people just for making a run take a bit longer. I'm not against kicking people making it impossible to complete it. And that applies to both DPS and other mechanics, and all three roles, tank, healer, and DPS.

I don't believe I've discussed with you about specific uses of parsers for that kind of scenario with you. I've pointed out objective gains from it, with the possible problems and solution for the problem - Which does depend on the player in question. But this is also another case of "catering to jerks". If a particular kind of player abuses the parser for needs like that, why would the community need to cater for it and not get a tool for the better end of the spectrum?

If you all know that the one person's poor DPS is causing problems, then what good does knowing their exact numbers serve?

Because you wouldn't know till you see those numbers. In case of personal parsers: What if every DPS is hiding theirs? Or what if two are hiding theirs? Do you kick whoever's not sharing? Or do you simply leave and avoid the problem altogether? If three out of 4 DPS shares their number, then why would there be a need to hide it if others can conclude you're the dead weight of the party while the other 3 are doing well? Ergo: Private parsing doesn't solve anything.

What's stopping them from asking how to share it?

What's stopping people from kicking them before asking? The contrary also applies here. (anti-jerk, remember)

Also, I notice that people skim over the PS3 limitations thing. What's your opinion on what needs to be removed for parsers if they couldn't even add in a TP bar without removing the party bonus to another window?

I have no idea how Square-Enix codes things, but from what I'm guessing about their logic about the TP bar:
They're sending a lot of data in a single object to each user every set amount of time per second (or once per second? No idea). While the user client can calculate the TP based on the actions players do, it wouldn't make sense for TP to be calculated locally, rather than being retrieved. Or at least, I wouldn't program it myself where you send 99% of related data through one object and let the remaining 1% be calculated locally.

However, for parsing it's different. Damage is already sent to the user through a package. With all the damage present locally, it would actually make sense to calculate damage locally. Unless they'd send more numbers from the server to each user, which is actually already present in raw format. But sending data twice wouldn't make sense either. (as mentioned previously)

In a nutshell: Nothing has to be removed as damage can be calculated locally. This wouldn't strain the server with anything as the present data is already being sent to the user. Whoever mods (or hacks) their parser to fabricate anything wouldn't cause any problems. After all, you're using the same parser, if their numbers are off while the entire group coincides, you'll know what's going on.

Edit:
My previous edit didn't include the ps3 part for some reason.

Anyways, as for the PS3, CPU and GPU are two different things. I'm pretty sure the GPU doesn't handle the damage calculations. If anything, the only strain on the GPU would be a couple of numbers it needs to display on the screen. As for the calculating part; I have no idea how much FF14 consumes the CPU of a PS3. So... no idea. #pcmasterrace