The issue nobody wants to address

[Archaell]

It's on its way.

It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

Now if only it could also teach players a little bit of responsibility for their roles...

[Ryel]

That idea has actually been recently used in WoW, in the form of proving grounds. Basically it's an encounter where each of the 3 roles has a task to fulfill or they don't pass. Dps kill waves of enemies that don't hit back. Healers heal npc's who fight waves of enemies. Tanks fight waves of hard-hitting enemies while an npc heals them. Everyone has a timer. The only difference to your suggestion was that it's not a group dungeon, but a solo one. Why make other people wait around for that one person, after all. Proving grounds gates the WoW equivalent to DF expert dungeons, and to this day after a year the gating was introduced you can still read occasional complaints about how it's too hard.

Not going to lie. A version of PG would be amazing to have in this game. Not for the DF gating though, I don't care for that. But to test yourself by pushing up the difficulty of the encounter to earn achievements or items. For me, getting the highest dps achievement was one of the most memorable things of the latest WoW expansion.

Not gating the latest DF roulette behind the proving grounds or beginners hall equivalent that they're adding to the game defeats the entire purpose of adding one to begin with and even if it did, it still wouldn't really help the issue without a public parse tool to support it.

Here's the thing, I'm not against the addition of a PG type place that allows players to practice to try and get better, in fact i think it's a good idea but the concept doesn't work by itself. Even if 100 players come in here and claim "but it worked in WoW!" they'd be forgetting the fact that WoW allows and supports Recount, which is a public parsing addon in addition to having the proving grounds in the game.

There is no substitute for live feedback.

Let's assume that "The beginner's hall" is required to enter Expert Roulette, and let's assume that it:

A) Always level syncs to the lowest available level cap gear.
B) Is always is required to enter the newest patch released Ex roulette dungeons (as in not a one time deal) and there is a second version specifically for endgame like Alexander (normal) / Ex Primals.

What's to stop players from just not playing at that level again after they clear the Beginner's hall area? Even more likely is the event that players will just eventually learn and play to the "script" of the beginner's hall encounter and eventually get a clear and never use it / learn from it again.

Now you enter Ex roulette and you're failing DPS checks or the party is crawling along at a slow pace, you look to the DPS and they say

"Hey man I've cleared the beginner's hall and you can't prove that my DPS is low"

And you wouldn't be able to, because we still wouldn't have a public parse tool.

Even worse, if it's not gated why would they bother?

Minions? Mount rewards? Achievements? Same scenario, they'll clear the beginner's hall to get the mount or minion and not actually care to learn while doing so.

Players think adding a beginner's hall is some sort of compromise but it really isn't, a beginner's hall by itself without a public parsing tool to support it amounts to nothing more than another (potentially optional) Gold Saucer activity.

The game is heavily reliant from the ground up on DPS performing in content, yet the only tool we have that offers live feedback is a third party program that isn't officially supported by the developers.

That's an issue.

[MentheusDreyar]

The game is heavily reliant from the ground up on DPS performing in content, yet the only tool we have that offers live feedback is a third party program that isn't officially supported by the developers.

That's an issue.

+1 to all of that, but especially this part

[Welsper59]

snip

I think the obvious retort is along the lines of what makes you think those same people would actually try with a parser though? I mean, we are talking about the same mental process of mouth breathers that queue for PvP, "AFK", get called out on it, and proudly express their intent to just do nothing to get their reward. Shaming these intentionally lazy people does literally nothing to them lol. You can't exactly call a GM to get involved because someone did too little DPS. The kick option is also there.

PGs are there to help you learn how to play your role to competency (not how to push out min/max numbers). It, without looking at any other variable, is a tool that is all-around helpful. Absolutely no negative consequence to it being there, as far as the benefits go. You understand this, obviously. The min/max area is basically the dummies along with parsers, which we currently have access to (this includes console players). Believe it or not, you're not going to be banned for using a parser, despite popular scare tactics. If that were to happen, quite a number of users who post pictures/vids/live-streams would have been long gone. Telling someone they have low DPS and need to improve to clear said content will not get your banned. In the case of a roulette, your options are there. Kick someone, provide advice without being a douche, or leave. PUGs are PUGs. It's not like games that do support parsers, officially or not, are immune to bad players. I dare say they're equal, if not worse, in ratio. So your options would again, even with it official, be exactly the same.

I'm all for parsers but you folks need to stop putting it on some pedestal as though it's a magic cure to bad players. With it official or not, your options are literally the exact same.

[Ryel]

I think the obvious retort is along the lines of what makes you think those same people would actually try with a parser though? I mean, we are talking about the same mental process of mouth breathers that queue for PvP, "AFK", get called out on it, and proudly express their intent to just do nothing to get their reward. Shaming these intentionally lazy people does literally nothing to them lol. You can't exactly call a GM to get involved because someone did too little DPS. The kick option is also there.

Shaming a player and holding them accountable for their role are not the same thing.

You can point out that a players DPS is low without being a jerk about it, however the game currently offers no systems to actually verify / prove this as a DPS, unlike tanks and healers whose performance is laid bare.

The community has no issue kicking under-performing tanks / healers for not meeting the bare minimum bar of performance for content because we can see when they aren't, yet for a DPS this is not the case on an individual basis.

PGs are there to help you learn how to play your role to competency (not how to push out min/max numbers). It, without looking at any other variable, is a tool that is all-around helpful. Absolutely no negative consequence to it being there, as far as the benefits go. You understand this, obviously. The min/max area is basically the dummies along with parsers, which we currently have access to (this includes console players). Believe it or not, you're not going to be banned for using a parser, despite popular scare tactics. If that were to happen, quite a number of users who post pictures/vids/live-streams would have been long gone. Telling someone they have low DPS and need to improve to clear said content will not get your banned. In the case of a roulette, your options are there. Kick someone, provide advice without being a douche, or leave. PUGs are PUGs. It's not like games that do support parsers, officially or not, are immune to bad players. I dare say they're equal, if not worse, in ratio. So your options would again, even with it official, be exactly the same.

This is where you're missing the point, not a single pro parser argument has brought up min/maxing. It is completely irrelevant to the conversation, nobody cares about DPS in Ex roulette doing over and above the minimum, the reality however is that there are large numbers of players not even hitting the minimum.

This is not a community bar of performance, the game has DPS checks that need to be met, just because those DPS checks are "easy" doesn't make them non-existent, especially when players are failing them.

All a proving ground does it prove that you're competent at clearing the proving ground, once again the PG in WoW exists in an environment where public parsers are accepted and supported, so you can get live per-content feedback on the skills you've practiced in training. If that weren't the case the PG wouldn't actually do anything.

I'm all for parsers but you folks need to stop putting it on some pedestal as though it's a magic cure to bad players. With it official or not, your options are literally the exact same.

And this is the second time you've missed the point, so much so to the degree that i'm wondering if you've actually read most of the replies in the thread.

I know i personally have said multiple times that not a single pro-parse argument is making that case, in fact the argument if anything has been about mitigation and accountability.

I'll even quote it with a slight edit for context.

During almost every update one of the EX roulette dungeons at one point or another has had some form of a DPS check.

My position from the get go is that all content has a bar of performance that needs to be met. Just because the bar is far lower in dungeons doesn't mean that the bar doesn't exist and we have vast numbers of players not even reaching that bar. Those players would benefit greatly from a public parsing tool.

Players keep making posts trying to make it seem like anyone pro-parser is hailing it as this magic fix-all that will solve all of the problems with players not meeting content checks or performing in parties when the reality is what nearly every pro parser argument has been saying is that it will mitigate the issue at best. It will also place DPS jobs on equal footing for accountability and feedback as tank and healer jobs, something that is massively imbalanced as far as the community is concerned.

Console players who are unable to get feedback for their DPS would be able to.

Players who are completely unaware of how well they are or aren't doing and wish to improve would now have a tool of measurement to go by.

Players who simply don't care and willingly hold back parties will likely be removed from them.

That post is 8 pages ago.

Additionally talking about third party application use in game is technically a bannable offense, hence why Yoshida's stance is basically that as a software development company they cannot condone their use.

Something that once again was already posted in this thread:

GE: Recently, there has been noise from players about parsers, mods and third-party applications being used with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and about people getting warned, suspended or even banned by GMs for using such applications. There was also mention of a plug-in API for the game. We were wondering what the policy was, your stance on it, and how you were approaching these issues. Some players are a bit worried and don’t want to get banned.

Yoshida: This is a very difficult question to answer. We are first and foremost a software company, and as a software company we cannot really approve of anyone modifying our product in any way. We would prefer it if everyone played within the original design of the software, otherwise we can’t really guarantee the quality of the product itself. Officially, the policy is that any additions or modification to the game are against the rules and privacy policy and when playing our game, everyone has to have gone through the steps to agree to the Terms and Conditions when you sign up.

However, I too am a hardcore PC gamer so I understand that there are a lot of plug-ins and add-ons available to many games. So as a PC gamer, all I can really say is “Please, don’t get caught.” If you are going to use add-ons and plug-ins please be discrete about it. Don’t go around telling your friends you mod the game on chat, or ask a GM if using such an add-on is ok. We can’t really go around and check if add-ons and plug-ins will work with our game and debug it, and check that it doesn’t break anything – its too much. Really what it comes down to is I can’t really say “Yes” to these things, and players have to realize that by using an application that accesses game files that they are the ones that are assuming the risk of viruses and possibly compromising their account.

And as you probably know, Final Fantasy XI had a particularly strict policy on this kind of thing, so there are quite a few players out there who moved from XI to XIV who definitely view any kind of add-on to the game as bad. So please, just be discrete if you will be using tools or add-ons.

Source:http://gamerescape.com/2014/02/12/ps...naoki-yoshida/

Why don't YouTube videos of clears and screenshots with parses flag this?

Because GMs as a rule do not use sources outside of the game to ban players due to their unreliability.

Someone can go into AfterEffects and add a layer on top of a video that looks like a parser, screenshots can be edited in photoshop to include parse overlays and who would be the wiser? It just doesn't fly for account suspension, but talking about them in-game is another story entirely.

[Sapphic]

I have a solution to this problem. 4-man dungeons with higher dps checks. Not like raiding tipe of course not, but at least something bit more harder like The Vault.

A dungeon were can be easly clear with a decent párty, were "everyone will need to pull their own weight" in orther to beat the check. That will make a perfect wall from the ones who wanna improve and the ones who dont want to.

All that would accomplish is numerous posts on the forums crying for nerfs....

Wouldn't mind something like the Infernal Council in swtor. Was basically 8 minibosses, one for each person. 2 for heals that did high damage but had low health, 2 for tanks that had a bit more health but less damage, and 4 for dps that had the most health and least damage. They were basically each a soft-enrage solo fight designed for your role.

It was right before the last boss at the time and made a nice solo-competency check.

Would need some changes to work for ffxiv though. Positionals would be weird, as well as tuning a dps check so that a brd/mch could do it while still being challenging for the others. Something more like Maat might work better.

I remember that, brought it up in another post I also remember the last fight being heavily RNG based, the RNG was if you did or didnt get game breaking bugs that made it impossible XD Took a while for them to actually fix as their "fixes" broke more on that fight than fixed ^_^

The Secret World had an interesting idea. A solo encounter you had to beat before you could do the expert version of the dungeons. The fight changed depending on your role, DPS, healer or tank and it pushed you to a level required to succeed in the expert dungeons, no pass, no experts.

http://uk.ign.com/wikis/the-secret-world/The_Gatekeeper

FFXI had a similar concept with Limit break quests.

[CosmicKirby]

Snip

Proving Grounds was certainly an interesting idea, although there were a few problems IMO.
A.) Given specializations in WoW, there were a few notable differences in how difficult the challenges were depending on how you chose to play. The healing trials were a lot easier if you had a lot of mitigation spells, a lot harder if you focused on HoTs. Comparably, I remember having absurd difficulty with the Gold trial on a Combat rogue, a spec designed for cleaving 2 targets, and the match was instantly easier changing to a spec I didn't play that focused on single target DPS.
B.) The difficulty of the challenges was a bit, odd. Bronze was absurdly easy. Silver might take you a few attempts. Gold was basically a puzzle that you had to solve a certain way. I think Gold, other than the above issue, was certainly helpful for finding players that can thing and change their strategy, thus qualifying for harder content. Silver indicated adequacy enough for dungeon queues and the like.
Bronze indicated... You had a pulse just about. And apparently some people couldn't finish it. I for one, would avoid people like the plague, when pertaining to partying for hard content, should I find out they couldn't at least do Silver. It functioned as a very disparate report card. Moreso it showed how bad a player was, rather than how good they were. It could have used a few more interesting and focused challenges and courses to give a more complete and useful assessment of player ability.

[Welsper59]

Shaming a player and holding them accountable for their role are not the same thing.

You can point out that a players DPS is low without being a jerk about it, however the game currently offers no systems to actually verify / prove this as a DPS, unlike tanks and healers whose performance is laid bare.

I understand that, but that's not what my point was. I have yet to see a response to the question posed. What exactly does that do for you? How does that magically alter the minds of the same people who intentionally look to laze through content by having a parser? You're still stuck where you are now lol. Parsers will not do anything for the situation. Content change, however, does... and that's irrelevant to parsers.

The community has no issue kicking under-performing tanks / healers for not meeting the bare minimum bar of performance for content because we can see when they aren't, yet for a DPS this is not the case on an individual basis.

This is content based, not exactly parser related. If, for example, someone was underperforming as a DPS, but the others were more than picking up the slack, would you still feel the individual baddy be kicked in-between a kill? That you should stop everything just to tell this person they're not doing what they should, or in the case of a boss fight, wipe it up to hold this bad DPS accountable? Individual basis right? There's varying scenarios in play on the matter. What good does a parser do for you there? Almost nothing, except a "ugh we had a bad player in our group" vibe. Very useful.

In the case of wipes in nearly all scenarios, you can generally determine whether the problem is DPS, tanks, or healers currently. In the case of wipes because of obviously bad DPS, sure, that accountability with a parser is useful. That singular scenario, in the case of bad outcomes promoting use of parsers, is definitely one I can see support for. That is a rather rare occurrence though, as opposed to the other.

This is where you're missing the point, not a single pro parser argument has brought up min/maxing. It is completely irrelevant to the conversation, nobody cares about DPS in Ex roulette doing over and above the minimum, the reality however is that there are large numbers of players not even hitting the minimum.

This is not a community bar of performance, the game has DPS checks that need to be met, just because those DPS checks are "easy" doesn't make them non-existent, especially when players are failing them.

I mention min/maxing under the context of going beyond what is acceptable for a given content. Simply learning how to play your job is enough to bring you to the point of being acceptable for most content. Proof? Me. Never used parsers till I started doing some raids near the end of ARR, yet I was already near my expected output without a single use of such a tool. Could have easily done most content, outside of competitive progression raiding. It's when you start to hit the raid scene, including primals, that players need to start understanding their roles better and parsers can come into play if they expect to do things without overgearing it. Some folks just need that extra push, I get that very well. It becomes the same process as the min/max mentality, hence my use of it.

And this is the second time you've missed the point, so much so to the degree that i'm wondering if you've actually read most of the replies in the thread.

I know i personally have said multiple times that not a single pro-parse argument is making that case, in fact the argument if anything has been about mitigation and accountability.

I'll even quote it with a slight edit for context.



That post is 7 pages ago.

Additionally talking about third party application use in game is technically a bannable offense, hence why Yoshida's stance is basically that as a software development company they cannot condone their use.

Something that once again was already posted in this thread:



Why don't YouTube videos of clears and screenshots with parses flag this?

Because GMs as a rule do not use sources outside of the game to ban players due to their unreliability.

Someone can go into AfterEffects and add a layer on top of a video that looks like a parser and who would be the wiser? It just doesn't fly for account suspension. But talking about them in-game is another story entirely.

Accountability is one thing. Mitigation is another. Parsers certainly do showcase accountability, but to what effect? Again, I ask... what does that do for you? How is it at all meaningful to essentially witch hunt? If you encounter the previously mentioned situation where a bad DPS is holding you back, what are you gonna do about it that you wouldn't do now? The minuscule degree that such mitigation would occur is indeed a support towards the positive of parsers, but it's hardly something even worth mentioning in more than a passing thought. I've played MMORPGs long enough to know this for a fact, that people do not change their efforts towards content that is capable to be facerolled. Some might say that's where accountability comes into play, but that's content change... nothing to do with parsers. Unless of course, accountability simply means an excuse to kick someone freely, which I know most folks don't mean.

Healing and tanking are far more important of a role to pick up. They're also not intended to be overly stressful as a result, hence why tanking is so mind-numbing and healing offers opportunity to DPS or Netflix. The ease is offset to the consequence of being poorly done, as a result. Asking for DPS to be accountable to a similar degree would have to mean they, on an individual basis, must do X output or else they will cause a wipe. Just like a bad healer or tank would. The chaos to ensue would be beautiful to me lol. I'm all for accountability on an individual level to match that of healers and tanks. I want to hear the cries on that end lol. People won't change, even then. We're still going to encounter that, albeit at a slightly less degree, where it'll be the new norm, and thus we'll still complain that people are bad. Square one.

Also, I'm well aware of the rules behind the parsers. I'm speaking from the reality of how the game is handled though. You won't be banned for using parsers, unless you've done something stupid about how you use it, just like botters using a hack instead of JUST botting (almost impossible to be banned for outside of a rare occurrence of a GM interacting with you and you're not there to respond). Just as you pointed out about outside sources, a GM is not going to take the word of some random report without some sort of in-game evidence that you did something clearly wrong, such as harassment as a result of said parsing.

Access to parsing information being useful to console users, so they don't have to engage in unsupported help by PC players doing this, is basically the strongest support for it. IMO, that's the strongest argument to support pro-parsers, together with the fact they focus on DPS checks for content. That's the only argument truly worth mentioning and that people should be focusing on. None of this mitigation crap. Accountability has little to do with parsers, so much as how content is designed and executed, so that too shouldn't really be mentioned outside of passing thought for the pro-parser argument.

Edit: Wanted to also reply to this:

All a proving ground does it prove that you're competent at clearing the proving ground, once again the PG in WoW exists in an environment where public parsers are accepted and supported, so you can get live per-content feedback on the skills you've practiced in training. If that weren't the case the PG wouldn't actually do anything.

Incorrect, except for the competent to clear bit. PGs primarily served as an introduction tool to party mechanics. What your role may involve experiencing. In the case of DPS, that would be positional mechanics (e.g. mobs that can't be hit from certain directions), single target focus fire, and AoE. They served their intended purpose perfectly, though whether it helped is another story. Addons like Recount, in regards to such practice occasions, were used through the training dummies, just as they are here. The mobs in PGs died so fast that it was pointless to parse them, except MAYBE in an AoE situation. Any other data you collect from it could (and would) be collected through the training dummy. I doubt anyone did use it for AoE parsing though, given it wasn't a very good one, and the fact it only came out towards the end of Mists.

[Ryel]

I understand that, but that's not what my point was. I have yet to see a response to the question posed. What exactly does that do for you? How does that magically alter the minds of the same people who intentionally look to laze through content by having a parser? You're still stuck where you are now lol. Parsers will not do anything for the situation. Content change, however, does... and that's irrelevant to parsers.

Well to quote someone else:

Yes, I will admit, I would use a parser to judge people. Because when a party is wiping again and again on content, unable to clear it due to not meeting DPS checks, I would rather kick the ONE person just slamming their fists on the keyboard rather than disbanding and making everyone fail. I've seen this on Bismarck EX, Ravana hard, Aery, Qarn hard... all over the place. Especially when it's the second or third boss on a dungeon, to tell everyone to just give up and go home with nothing because one person is just spamming their level 1 ability instead of comboing.

But apparently that makes me an asshole.

I can do that without a parser, true, and I do attempt to do so when DPS checks aren't being met. but I doubt me eyeballing the chat log is as accurate as a program noting down the damage everyone has done. Especially if I'm trying to heal and DPS just in case a miracle happens and those of us actually playing can eke out a flawless routine and grasp victory by the skin of our teeth.

Sometimes a player is AFK off to the side and it's easy to see. Other times it's less obvious, like if they're still hitting the monster but doing no combos. Sometimes it's 8-man content and I can't keep an eye on everyone, especially if I'm trying to do my own job.

This isn't about speedruns. Hell, I don't think any of the pro-parser people have brought up speedruns. This isn't about yelling at people for being 10 DPS below the other person. This is about easily identifying players who are keeping a group from finishing a run so advice can be given, or more likely so they can be kicked because DPS are special snowflakes who should never be advised under any situation, and they are ever so happy to remind me of the fact every time one does poorly.

The language might be a tad harsh but the point is still valid.

So to directly answer your question so there's no confusion:

"Will adding a public parser change the minds / behavior of players who are lazy / refuse to play up to par?"

Maybe? But most likely not.

What it will do however is hold those players accountable for their role. in some cases knowing that your performance is put on display for others to see is enough of a reason for some people to actually pick up the slack especially if they're afraid of getting booted from a dungeon with a DPS check that they aren't meeting. And by meeting i mean like the barest of bare minimum DPS, as in so far below that they obviously aren't paying attention.

In other cases it allows for more feedback and control in party stations when you have 3/4 or 7/8 people actively trying and 1 person who is obviously along for the ride.

This is content based, not exactly parser related. If, for example, someone was underperforming as a DPS, but the others were more than picking up the slack, would you still feel the individual baddy be kicked in-between a kill? That you should stop everything just to tell this person they're not doing what they should, or in the case of a boss fight, wipe it up to hold this bad DPS accountable? Individual basis right? There's varying scenarios in play on the matter. What good does a parser do for you there? Almost nothing, except a "ugh we had a bad player in our group" vibe. Very useful.

In the case of wipes in nearly all scenarios, you can generally determine whether the problem is DPS, tanks, or healers currently. In the case of wipes because of obviously bad DPS, sure, that accountability with a parser is useful. That singular scenario, in the case of bad outcomes promoting use of parsers, is definitely one I can see support for. That is a rather rare occurrence though, as opposed to the other.

Player testimony on these forums alone have shown that it isn't as rare as you think it is, from constant calls for DPS check nerfs as early as demon wall and threads like this popping up on the front page:

Tales from Duty Finder Some make you laugh some make you cry. Let's vent.

It happens quite often given how many of the (very low mind you) but large variety of DPS oriented content checks spread out everywhere from leveling dungeons, to Ex roulette to endgame aren't being met.

As to dungeon etiquette It really depends on the situation and how far below the bar the player is. If the party is incapable of clearing the content because it's designed around 4 players actively contributing and 1 player isn't thus leading to constant wipes? They'd probably be replaced.

Is it a situation where the dungeon is still progressing relatively quickly but one guy is slightly below where he should be or obviously being carried but it isnt to the detriment of the group? I'm personally not likely to care tbh, unless they start complaining.

I mention min/maxing under the context of going beyond what is acceptable for a given content. Simply learning how to play your job is enough to bring you to the point of being acceptable for most content. Proof? Me. Never used parsers till I started doing some raids near the end of ARR, yet I was already near my expected output without a single use of such a tool. Could have easily done most content, outside of competitive progression raiding. It's when you start to hit the raid scene, including primals, that players need to start understanding their roles better and parsers can come into play if they expect to do things without overgearing it. Some folks just need that extra push, I get that very well. It becomes the same process as the min/max mentality, hence my use of it.

Sure, i get that and i don't disagree.

Just because you figured it out and didn't need a boot to the butt doesn't mean that other players do not however.

Like i said there are a large number of players who have issues with very basic rotations and DPS output. I mean if steps of Faith is anything to go by there are a large number of players who have issues following directions that are literally being shouted across the screen by NPCs like.. that instance could literally have been titled "Follow the fly text (Normal)" and people still were wiping it to the point of needing nerfs.

Accountability is one thing. Mitigation is another. Parsers certainly do showcase accountability, but to what effect? Again, I ask... what does that do for you? How is it at all meaningful to essentially witch hunt? If you encounter the previously mentioned situation where a bad DPS is holding you back, what are you gonna do about it that you wouldn't do now? The minuscule degree that such mitigation would occur is indeed a support towards the positive of parsers, but it's hardly something even worth mentioning in more than a passing thought. I've played MMORPGs long enough to know this for a fact, that people do not change their efforts towards content that is capable to be facerolled. Some might say that's where accountability comes into play, but that's content change... nothing to do with parsers. Unless of course, accountability simply means an excuse to kick someone freely, which I know most folks don't mean.

Healing and tanking are far more important of a role to pick up. They're also not intended to be overly stressful as a result, hence why tanking is so mind-numbing and healing offers opportunity to DPS or Netflix. The ease is offset to the consequence of being poorly done, as a result. Asking for DPS to be accountable to a similar degree would have to mean they, on an individual basis, must do X output or else they will cause a wipe. Just like a bad healer or tank would. The chaos to ensue would be beautiful to me lol. I'm all for accountability on an individual level to match that of healers and tanks. I want to hear the cries on that end lol. People won't change, even then. We're still going to encounter that, albeit at a slightly less degree, where it'll be the new norm, and thus we'll still complain that people are bad. Square one.

This is already the case.

We already as a community condone "witch hunts" when it comes to tanks / healers, in fact it's more commonly done so because a large amount of the time the mechanics are DPS reliant and theres no way to prove that the DPS failed them.

Stop me if you've heard this one before on a wipe:

"Where are the heals!?"
"Healer, why didn't you heal me!?"
"Seriously healer!!!!!!???1111111"

Never mind that the DPS was eating "backhand-ga VII" and the mob in question only uses it if it's failed to be killed / stunned in time.

This game is unlike most other MMO's in that the majority of content is balanced around DPS checks or DPS oriented mechanics. This isn't like a lot of the other MMOs that simply have extended tank and spank fights that can be drawn out due to tank / healer stamina, or even fights that have tons of mechanics that need to be handled and account for DPS players spending long periods of time not even hitting the mob.

Personally i'd love those, give me levers to pull, mobs to position, buttons to hit, floors to jump etc. all of that makes for much more interesting fight design in the long run.

Instead a large number encounters are based on "Do X amount of DPS or you wipe" end of story, like almost all of endgame and a large number of dungeon mechanics ranging from leveling dungeons to Ex roulette are literally this, making DPS an equally crucial role to tanks / healers but the community still has this mindset that they somehow share less of the responsibility. And the best part? The game doesn't even offer you a tool to see how well you are / aren't doing when those checks come up.

How is a tank or healer going to prevent Nidhogg from BBQing the party because the DPS failed to do enough damage before the hard enrage sets in? Do more DPS? Sure, on TOP of already tanking and healing the encounter, surely the answer isn't to ask the DPS to pick up the slack.

Also, I'm well aware of the rules behind the parsers. I'm speaking from the reality of how the game is handled though. You won't be banned for using parsers, unless you've done something stupid about how you use it, just like botters using a hack instead of JUST botting (almost impossible to be banned for outside of a rare occurrence of a GM interacting with you and you're not there to respond). Just as you pointed out about outside sources, a GM is not going to take the word of some random report without some sort of in-game evidence that you did something clearly wrong, such as harassment as a result of said parsing.

Access to parsing information being useful to console users, so they don't have to engage in unsupported help by PC players doing this, is basically the strongest support for it. IMO, that's the strongest argument to support pro-parsers, together with the fact they focus on DPS checks for content. That's the only argument truly worth mentioning and that people should be focusing on. None of this mitigation crap. Accountability has little to do with parsers, so much as how content is designed and executed, so that too shouldn't really be mentioned outside of passing thought for the pro-parser argument.

I'm all for changing how content is designed personally, but between the Devs wanting things to be cleared in relatively quick times in the DF (as in they don't want 1 hour long boss stamina fights) and the fact that mechanic based fights seem to have the lowest clear rates / most nerfs in the game (See; Steps of Faith, Turn 2 without enrage strat,Turn 7 before the nerf, Turn 9 etc) DPS checks seem to always be the fallback option.

As long as content is going to have DPS be the set bar for pass/failing then yes there very much is an accountability issue if we can't get players to meet that bar and public parsing would greatly help this.

EDIT: to respond to your Edit

Edit: Wanted to also reply to this:


Incorrect, except for the competent to clear bit. PGs primarily served as an introduction tool to party mechanics. What your role may involve experiencing. In the case of DPS, that would be positional mechanics (e.g. mobs that can't be hit from certain directions), single target focus fire, and AoE. They served their intended purpose perfectly, though whether it helped is another story. Addons like Recount, in regards to such practice occasions, were used through the training dummies, just as they are here. The mobs in PGs died so fast that it was pointless to parse them, except MAYBE in an AoE situation. Any other data you collect from it could (and would) be collected through the training dummy. I doubt anyone did use it for AoE parsing though, given it wasn't a very good one, and the fact it only came out towards the end of Mists.

I don't mean to imply that players were parsing PGs i mean that public parsers allowed players to see how well the skills they practiced in PGs translated to live content, aka live-per content feedback for DPS after they get the basics of their roles down in training.

[Welsper59]

Well to quote someone else:



The language might be a tad harsh but the point is still valid.

So to directly answer your question so there's no confusion:

"Will adding a public parser change the minds / behavior of players who are lazy / refuse to play up to par?"

Maybe? But most likely not.

What it will do however is hold those players accountable for their role. in some cases knowing that your performance is put on display for others to see is enough of a reason for some people to actually pick up the slack especially if they're afraid of getting booted from a dungeon with a DPS check that they aren't meeting. And by meeting i mean like the barest of bare minimum DPS, as in so far below that they obviously aren't paying attention.

In other cases it allows for more feedback and control in party stations when you have 3/4 or 7/8 people actively trying and 1 person who is obviously along for the ride.

I won't argue about that, as I do agree about the benefits towards those situations. It'll simply be a tool to support the necessity to properly kick, which as the person quoted said, is something that can already be done, just not as effectively or easily. I'll just say that this is likely an example of us just wanting to grasp whatever form of mediation, despite it not being as common as implied (for most of us). Which leads me to the next point.

Player testimony on these forums alone have shown that it isn't as rare as you think it is, from constant calls for DPS check nerfs as early as demon wall and threads like this popping up on the front page:

Tales from Duty Finder Some make you laugh some make you cry. Let's vent.

It happens quite often given how many of the (very low mind you) but large variety of DPS oriented content checks spread out everywhere from leveling dungeons, to Ex roulette to endgame aren't being met.

As to dungeon etiquette It really depends on the situation and how far below the bar the player is. If the party is incapable of clearing the content because it's designed around 4 players actively contributing and 1 player isn't thus leading to constant wipes? They'd probably be replaced.

Is it a situation where the dungeon is still progressing relatively quickly but one guy is slightly below where he should be or obviously being carried but it isnt to the detriment of the group? I'm personally not likely to care tbh, unless they start complaining.

Something to keep in mind is that we always remember the bad, more than the good (or acceptable). We focus on these things, so it's natural find out about. A lot of the time, it's the same people posting on same-topic threads. I'm guilty of that, definitely. But you have to take into account what the ratio is of these bad and completely unacceptable occurrences are. Out of the literally hundreds/thousands of group content that most of us have done, can we honestly say that the inexcusable wipes/problems, specifically from DPS, occurred so often that we could even remotely consider it something more than "rare"? Speaking on an individual level, as our own personal experience is the only thing we truly have to go on as fact. I can say that, personally, it is absolutely rare in ratio to the whole of groups I've been in. It's almost guaranteed you'll encounter it from time to time, but hardly something you always expect in a general situation. Specifically pointing out ridiculous expectations, like clearing a DF T9 or Ultima HM back in ARR is not a valid argument, as we're talking about the whole here, and I know some people would reach for those to support their arguments.

The majority of those posts in the thread pertain to complaints about bad tanks and healers, more than DPS, if the first 3 pages and the last are anything to go on. What DPS complaints I did notice were specific to SMN though lol. I have my own complaints about bad tanks in AV. Tanks that don't know how to build threat or manage AoE threat. They're literally the only problems I've encountered when it comes to AV, which has been the only thing I've gotten lately for lower roulette. Parsing doesn't exactly save me from those terrible tanks, honestly.

Sure, i get that and i don't disagree.

Just because you figured it out and didn't need a boot to the butt doesn't mean that other players do not however.

Like i said there are a large number of players who have issues with very basic rotations and DPS output. I mean if steps of Faith is anything to go by there are a large number of players who have issues following directions that are literally being shouted across the screen by NPCs like.. that instance could literally have been titled "Follow the fly text (Normal)" and people still were wiping it to the point of needing nerfs.

/nod Yep. But again, that's something irrelevant to parsers and just a matter of L2P.

This is already the case.

We already as a community condone "witch hunts" when it comes to tanks / healers, in fact it's more commonly done so because a large amount of the time the mechanics are DPS reliant and theres no way to prove that the DPS failed them.

Stop me if you've heard this one before on a wipe:

"Where are the heals!?"
"Healer, why didn't you heal me!?"
"Seriously healer!!!!!!???1111111"

Never mind that the DPS was eating "backhand-ga VII" and the mob in question only uses it if it's failed to be killed / stunned in time.

This game is unlike most other MMO's in that the majority of content is balanced around DPS checks or DPS oriented mechanics. This isn't like a lot of the other MMOs that simply have extended tank and spank fights that can be drawn out due to tank / healer stamina, or even fights that have tons of mechanics that need to be handled and account for DPS players spending long periods of time not even hitting the mob.

Personally i'd love those, give me levers to pull, mobs to position, buttons to hit, floors to jump etc. all of that makes for much more interesting fight design in the long run.

Instead a large number encounters are based on "Do X amount of DPS or you wipe" end of story, like almost all of endgame and a large number of dungeon mechanics ranging from leveling dungeons to Ex roulette are literally this, making DPS an equally crucial role to tanks / healers but the community still has this mindset that they somehow share less of the responsibility. And the best part? The game doesn't even offer you a tool to see how well you are / aren't doing when those checks come up.

How is a tank or healer going to prevent Nidhogg from BBQing the party because the DPS failed to do enough damage before the hard enrage sets in? Do more DPS? Sure, on TOP of already tanking and healing the encounter, surely the answer isn't to ask the DPS to pick up the slack.

High responsibility roles are always the first to blame, be it parser or no. There's no escape from that, even if DPS were more accountable.

The general flowchart goes:
Did tank die? If yes, blame healer.
Did healer die? If yes, blame tank.
Did DPS/support/etc die? If yes, blame healer and/or tank.
Did the whole group die because of not properly taking down a target before a party wipe mechanic occurred? If yes, blame DPS.

Notice how many occasions roles besides DPS get called on? Of course, there are some mechanics that rely on others to do something extra, like any gaol type mechanics. This is just how things work in a party setting with designated roles. You rely and place more responsibility on the people who keep you alive than you do the people who might get you through something faster (which is one of the only varying effects between competent DPS).

I'm all for changing how content is designed personally, but between the Devs wanting things to be cleared in relatively quick times in the DF (as in they don't want 1 hour long boss stamina fights) and the fact that mechanic based fights seem to have the lowest clear rates / most nerfs in the game (See; Steps of Faith, Turn 2 without enrage strat,Turn 7 before the nerf, Turn 9 etc) DPS checks seem to always be the fallback option.

As long as content is going to have DPS be the set bar for pass/failing then yes there very much is an accountability issue if we can't get players to meet that bar and public parsing would greatly help this.

Yes, exactly. This is a big part of the core argument that should be stated for pro-parser arguments. There's also the unfair advantages bit between console players inability to access parsers themselves is also in relation to that, regardless of how minimal it is and the fact that there are ways to get said information through others, it's just something you can't do on your own as a console player. It's a strong supporting argument because of that inability and the fact you're essentially encouraged to break the rules a bit.

I don't mean to imply that players were parsing PGs i mean that public parsers allowed players to see how well the skills they practiced in PGs translated to live content, aka live-per content feedback for DPS after they get the basics of their roles down in training.

Ah. Got it. It's also worth noting though that in relation to WoW and the PG, they also intended for people to use their in-game tips/guide on how to play the class. Just simply following that, and reading the skill description, you'd already be set on how to play that specific class properly/decently. Unless of course, someone were that helpless or stubborn. In which case, it's unlikely anything would change them and they probably wouldn't even clear the PG lol. My main point of the whole matter is that parsers are great to have and use, but they don't do as much, or rather aren't as impacting as others think to the bad player community. There are much better reasons to be pro-parser than to argue for the tool to simply point out bad players, as you/me/others have indicated. People need to stick to those arguments, instead of always defaulting to the finger pointing one.