Absolute frustration at not being able to see my own DPS (ps4)

[zosia]

snip

Yes, you can't figure everything out with just practice and gut intuition, that's why parsers are a thing in the first place!!! Some changes only make small differences that you would not notice without some numerical data.

But hey! What do I know, I am just a player who has cleared everything in the game. Who are you, just another person speaking from ignorance here on the forums.

Also, Why would a blm need to use triggers? That's rich, lol. What would I use triggers for on a4s? Maybe an extra notification that I have five lines targeting me? Lol! Triggers are much more of a tank and healer thing. Jfc why would you even respond to this thread if you don't even know that much. It's painfully obvious you are talking out of your bum hole

[Kazumac]

Yes, you can't figure everything out with just practice and gut intuition, that's why parsers are a thing in the first place!!! Some changes only make small difference you would not notice without some numerical data.
But hey! What do I know, I am just a player who has cleared everything in the game. Who are you, just another person speaking from ignorance here on the forums.

If they've never used a parser and don't actively do savage... They probably have no context to know the usefulness of the tool. It's like the guy who said pets aren't contributing that much dps to be worth considering when evaluating damage output. Lols. To really understand the full benefit a person needs to have used one tackling progressive content and sadly those who vehemently oppose one due to it not being necessary likely lack those experiences or rely on a group where another person is using it to the benefit of their raid.

Or they may rely on guides developed using a parser for example it would be hard to know the optimal MCH opener definitively without using one. The arguments for ignorance hold even less water than the harassment ones.

[Gardes]

Current fights meaning the only thing i haven't cleared is Alexander Savage and Thordan Extreme? Anyways, your example in A4S how you figured out you "As a blm on a4s I can tell when I should use the ability enochain and when I should hold it to refresh for the next leg." Your parser TELLS you that? You couldn't have POSSIBLY, figured that out by yourself, with practice, really? Interesting argument. Lets just also point out what you probably use it for the most, TRIGGERS.

Just imagine you're a race driver practicing on a race track. Your car doesnt have any meters. You have a race coming in 2 weeks and you want to improve your lap time. You have some ideas on what you want to do to speed up but all you have is your 'gut feeling' and you literally can't be told what your lap times are while Zosia here has his lap times timed and he is informed of what his lap times are. All you'll get is you thinking "uhh I think I went faster this time. Did I? Maybe? I think so..." while Zosia doesn't have to second guess himself about any tuning he did. He knows what the results are.

[Ryel]

-long post-

The majority of what i would have said in response to your initial post has mostly been covered by Zosia's response here, but to what wasn't I'd like to elaborate a bit on myself.

The point I have made, and will continue to make, is that an official parser in the game hands those players a 'stick' with which to beat other players. You can say that they would harass others anyway, and I will agree, they probably would. But by condoning parser use with an official parser, the in-game climate changes to one where it's considered OK to criticize other players performance. Now, if, as I discussed with Kazumac, there was a personal parser, it wouldn't contribute to player harassment, the same jerks would continue to be jerks and the world would turn. If there were an opt-in group parser for pre-made groups, it would reduce any scope for abuse since players voluntarily opt-in to being parsed in a group situation. Once again, jerks will be jerks and the world will turn.

I think this in particular is a major point of misunderstanding when it comes to human nature, let me explain.

While I'm fully aware that what the OP initially asked for is a personal parser and i keep seeing it brought up as an alternative to public parsing that most can agree on as a halfway point I'm going to have to disagree that it will go over as everyone is expecting.

let me make this clear I have nothing against the implementation of a personal parser / opt in parser, however speaking objectively it is more likely to lead to cases of harassment than the alternative of a public parser.

Now why is this?

For one, 3rd party parsers still exist and you will not convince those on PC that use them to make the switch to an inferior product, additionally this still keeps console players at a distinct disadvantage because they are getting partial information and not the whole picture.

Secondly there is no way to add one to the game that will circumvent the issues that will arise as a result of party chat.

Take this scenario:

A party wipes to an endgame DPS check and asks the four DPS classes to post their numbers so they can compare to try and evaluate where the issue lies to work on fixing it.

Two of the DPS post their real numbers, one of them lies and posts false numbers and the last one refuses to post them at all because they fear harassment.

Exactly how do you think this will go over?

A PC player running a 3rd party tool already knows which numbers are correct, those on the consoles now need to sit there and try to math out which numbers are honest and which aren't while the party now comes full stop to start a 10 minute witch hunt to figure out who is telling the truth, and i promise you it wouldn't be the most civil of discussions.

You shouldn't have to sit there to debate for data that should be readily available as the battle log can be viewed by any memeber of the party already, however a parser converts it into a more readable format for quick understanding. Having a group of players that for lack of a better term "hide" their performance for fear of being targeted for harassment will instead make themselves more obvious targets by doing so. If 7 out of 8 players in a party have no issues showing their numbers that 1 person remaining has already made themselves the odd man out and that doesn't' bode well in situations where group cooperation and team-play are paramount.

It's likely to unintentionally antagonize members of the group who otherwise would have been very nice and helpful had they known outright, but now feel they have to pull teeth or fight a party member to speak up so they can fix simple issues.

It just wouldn't end well.

You've linked multiple sources. OK, there are multiple posts in this topic that discuss the opposite experience, the most exhaustively covered example being DCUO. You can link things, so can I or others. It's no surprise that there are many different experiences, points of view or school's of thought on the matter, it's not a cut and dried topic.

If you want to cite DCUO I'm the wrong person to try and use that as a counterargument against, sorry.

I personally played DCUO from the moment it launched back when it was a subscription based MMO and I played for well over a year. So we can sit here and do the anecdotal argument thing all day where I say that my personal experiences were the complete opposite of what was posted in this thread and that seeing the performance scorecard was nothing but positive to the groups I went in.

I never once saw or heard of an issue of harassment or conflict arise for players seeing their performance on display and if anything it allowed us to quickly troubleshoot if someone needed to swap roles (since everyone had a DPS spec and could swap mid raid) because someone in another role was having an issue. it also promoted healthy and lighthearted competition when we knew full well that class balance was messed up and certain specs / weapons were innately more powerful than other combinations at the time (I'm looking at you fire tank, and archer sorcery)

But like the comments before my experiences are entirely anecdotal and I also played on PC (on PvP servers) where the majority of players were already used to parse culture, it's possible the console servers were simply going through growing pains as people who hadn't played MMOs before were adjusting to the concept.

Now see, that's a different argument. In the previous paragraph you talked about the threads you linked to and that the thing you claim I ignore is that people already harass others over their performance. Whether or not developers believe that there is a legitimate fear in the community is a very subjective thing, because it depends very much on the game, community and developer, along with the type of game and how parsing is implemented. Developers frequently mis-read the community and what the wants or needs of the community are. This forum itself provides daily documentation of many, many times when developers have thought the community wanted something and the community has proven the developer to be wrong.

Except here and in other threads we have cases of the community clearly asking for the addition of a parse or performance feedback tool, and more often than not it's the console players who have no access to this functionality asking for it.

I find it hard to believe that the developers could mis-read and misinterpret the current thread's title of a Ps4 players saying they want to be on an even playing field, not to mention that the question has been raised (and responded to) in multiple interviews and during fan fest live letters.

Myself and others see no reason that the fear of a small subset of players should restrict access to features that a larger community of players are asking for, especially considering they are also paying customers.

The counter arguments against them however have been insulting if anything as if they were children being denied a toy

Console users: 'Hey we'd like a way to get feedback on our damage like some of the PC players are able to, is there a way an official method can be added so we can see how well we're doing?"

Counter argument: "Sorry i don't think that's a good idea yours or another player's feelings might get hurt as a result, but feel free to ask a PC user to tell you your numbers"

or even better

Counter argument: "Nah you don't really NEED one you just WANT one"

Console users: "Oh... okay.."

See the issue here?

EDIT: for another perspective that most don't consider this was posted on reddit:

If this game had a built in (personal) parser, I would enjoy gearing up even more.

This aspect of not having a parser hadn't occurred to me, but I totally agree. As a PS4 player the only visible change from getting a new piece of gear is iLvl and, other than needing a certain level to access new content, I've lost interest in my iLvl.

I'm currently on a break from FFXIV and have been playing other random games. Until I read your post it hadn't occurred to me how much I've liked getting a new piece of gear in those games because I can either see numbers for hits on the screen, or can just see the mobs dying faster.

I have all jobs in FFXIV at 50 plus a few at 60, but I rarely play any of them other than my main because I simply can't see whether I am doing well or not on them. I really hadn't realised how much of a hindrance not being able to see my own numbers was until now.

[Almalexia]

Just a reminder that if you're going to make a post on a forum any longer than a page (~300 words) you should include a dick joke to keep your audience engaged.

[Gamer3427]

One good thing about playing MCH. While I can't get a full DPS rate from it, I can use Wildfire to judge how much damage my burst is doing, since that's where MCHs main DPS comes into play. Not exactly perfect, but it does give an idea of what exactly changes in my rotation do to affect my damage. If I'm suddenly down or up a few hundred or even a thousand points on average after a few tries when compared to my usual rotation, then I know whether my new one is an improvement or not. Still, I am looking forward to whenever they do implement the solo parser into the game, just because it will be nice to have full numbers....

[Kaurie]

My perceived reality can be the sun rising in the morning because I perceive the warmth of it's light. Of course the sun is in fact rising casting the warm light, so it's both reality and my perceived reality.

Just a note, the sun rising is your perceived reality but not an actual reality. The sun is not rising, the reason it appears to be rising is the planet rotated in a way relative to the sun that it looks that way (TLDR has more to do with the planet moving than the sun moving).

As for parsing, I feel very late to this thread and there are so many arguments, but here is my 2 cents.

Personal Parsers are more likely to encourage bad behavior than public ones, this is because in addition to the concerns of "elitists" forcing their standards on others, there will also be people who attack others and lie about their own progress. You'll have people demanding others post their parse, and people talking smack about others not performing well. When they say 'well my parser actually says'... 'Yeah right lol noob, we don't believe you. stop making up sh*t" etc..

Public Parsers will have everything out in the open, so there will be no hiding, no lying etc. It will allow you from the get go to see how you compare to people around you and work towards improvement if you so desire.

Not having a parser withholds data from the user.

In all 3 situations there will be jerks, and there is already ToS in place to handle jerks.

In my opinion, the downsides of not having a parser outweigh the potential downsides of having one, and that a public parser is less likely to cause problems than a personal one. This is all speculation, as there has been no research on the subject. Ultimately, everyone gets their data from one game which went from no parsers to allowing parsers, and the data is all anecdotal and not at all scientific.

[Azazua_azura]

@ kezy

DCUO started @ ps3 launch as a sub based MMO, what happen was the ps3 crowd had an outcry and rioted for it to be free to play not understanding what an MMO was or why it needed a sub, the devs failed to deliver the large update a mnth and with the ingame riots blocking exits to actually play people quit and the game became f2p with in 3 mnths. I'm unsure when the Parser was added, but i personally saw no good come from it. All i experi4enced and still experience is players not working together trying to top dps, and harassing you over mic.

Just fyi I still have my dcuo disk someplace in my closet, I recall buying it from game stop that game never launched as free.

I also wouldn't take ryles word for it as i still play the game on and off and it more or less a cess pool, i play it during mant. And being a female gamer i had to put up with THAT harrassment too -_-;;'


(tbh i actually don't think he played the game just trying to discredit those who made mention of it)


thing is though and this will happen, people will start complaining about dmg in content outsude raiding, some infact do already. I personally don;t care ifd a person parses or not, i just don't think its wise to subject the whole game to it. I don't feel i'm a second class players for not having a parser. But this stuff never stays personal.

And please stop talking down tpo me about dps checks.... I never had an issue beating a dps check. Seriously its not something all that hard to do, and mmo are not the only game genre with dps check type battles/content.

I read ur post 3 times just to make sure I understood it and something I wanted to express, All i have ever said is i dislike parser. I never once stated they shouldn't be added. I do thing it would be a bad idea. The reason why parser harassment isn't as wide spread as parser are supposedly (you can't factually say that but w/e ) is its a ban-able to say you use a parser. So people keep it to themselves unless in a safe enviroment. Add a parser, there will be a big switch. More people will have access and use to either troll, harrasse, etc other players. I was already harrassed to the point of moving to a jp server over being a fresh tank. Just read these forums, read fc chat, people already complain about dps not pulling their waight in content outside of raiding.

@ kaurie

what is the downside of not having a parser, mind eleborating?

[Yumiko]

@Azazua_azura

You're throwing information to discredit someone that you could be accused of yourself. Wheres your CD "in your closet somewhere"? I don't think you've shown anymore proof than he has, in fact you've shown less reason to believe his credentials when it comes to DCUO experience. While you very likely could have, you have only attacked his point through.. saying he never actually played it? I'd say this can feel rather insulting to any visitors of this forum that you would need to use ad hominem.

When it comes to the point I actually do not fall under one that cares whether or not there is an in game parser, I dislike the culture and experience but I would rather use strong points and listen to others rather than attack and bring down others' experiences. You may very well have experienced such things yourself but if you wish others to take you seriously in a discussion, you should be subject to the same criticisms. His experience can vary, he could be wrong, but when you focus on attacking someone else you are losing sight of an argument.

On topic,

@Gamer3427

My experience as a MCH is similar. While I can measure my DPS with the highs and lows of Wildfire and understand how well I'm doing at the high points of my DPS if we look at it in graph form I actually have issues trying to watch my wildfires on the screen. With how visually stimulating this game can be, it can actually become overwhelming to try to track my numbers during an actual fight so I also would love a solo parse to help me identify my actual numbers. Likewise sometimes with small latency issues I can see reassemble and a clean shot proc get lost and Sometimes I would like to know when I encountered such an issue. Overall, I would definitely enjoy the benefits with how hard it is to identify my Lead Shot's damage as well. The visuals could be better sure, but it could be more effective to know my normal Lead Shot damage and identify how much downtime I have. While I am a PC user, PS4 using Machinists already have it rough enough, I feel like the least they could use is better feedback and a solo parse method would be lovely for them I'm sure.

[Aquaslash]

what is the downside of not having a parser, mind eleborating?

From my own personal experience in The Neverending Quest To Git Gud, it was living in the blissful ignorance of thinking I was hot stuff, when the reality was that I was a massive shitter. Up until Alex savage, the game is faceroll easy for every. Flippin. Thing.

Literally any time I struggled in MSQ, echo kicked in and I sailed through everything. The leaders of my FC are so afraid of conflict that they bottle up any and all objections and just let me be a blissful idiot. (Probably didn't help that I had a hair trigger temper back in the day) The hints were here and there, and I even got kicked from a pug group, but the healers in that were blatantly screwing up mechanics and dying, so they were easy scapegoats.

It wasn't til I started I started networking with other dragoons and found an FC member who wasn't afraid to lay it all out there that I learned I was underperforming by a decent margin. (The problem ended up being poor OGCD usage)

The point of all this jive is that I could have been spared a whole lot of headache and a day of reworking muscle memory if I could see my own data from the get go and compare it to the acceptable standards. You can say "durr aggro meter, but there are aggro reducing skills, as well ad the very real (and often) scenario that you're the best of a bad group since the REAL badasses tend to never ever use DF ever.

Now you can scream harrasment all day, but did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, if you find yourself regularly on the recieving end of such treatment, then maybe you aren't as good as you think you are, and should probably man up and get better?