Why are low standards for dps acceptable?

[Belhi]

Actually yes. Most of the playerbase had it downloaded.

Recount has been among the top 3 most downloaded addons from curse client for over 8 years.
I had it.
All of my friends had it.
Entire guilds had it.
Any random player that knew of the curse website had it.
If your dps sucked, everyone will know, which also bred competition, and drive to do more damage than your piers. A drive that's nearly non-existent partially because of the fear of being banned for violation of ToS

Yes, meters may be used as a tool to antagonize players, or create habits like tunnel visioning, and greed, but at least the fact that your damage compared to everyone else's is right there for all to see. You'd want to not suck at your class, or else you'd be the butt of jokes. But guess what? People were motivated to do better because of it!

No they weren't motivated to do better because of it. Infact they were often motivated to get tunnel vision on mechanics because they were so focused on numbers. That's my point. I never argued that Recount wasn't wide spread. My point was that Recount didn't do squat to make people play better and anyone who harped on about dps numbers either was treated as elitist or accused of being obsessed with their Epeen.

Recount as a tool was most useful for measuring personal rotation performance. It's actual use in measuring the quality of a player was very unreliable. Many players got great numbers on recount but couldn't do encounter mechanics to save their lives.

Your looking at WoW's LFG scene either with Rose tinted glasses or trying to give it a positive spin as a way to argue for a parser. Personally I don't have an objection to parsers but your argument using WoW as an example is just false. Parsers did nothing to improve the quality of dps and in many cases made them worse because dps got obsessed with getting high numbers at the cost of doing mechanics correctly.

I have said it before and Ill say it again. Nothing any player can do can force another player to meet a certain standard. It just doesn't happen. You have 3 choices. Only 3 and frankly you will only ever have 3. Vote Dismiss, leave or just accept it and finish the instance anyway. If you don't want to have to deal with poor players don't use random groups. Do your roulettes with your friends.

[Reilyn]

No they weren't motivated to do better because of it. Infact they were often motivated to get tunnel vision on mechanics because they were so focused on numbers.

Already admitted that, is an unfortunate side-effect it had on players with poor priorities.

My point was that Recount didn't do squat to make people play better.

Now that's just a lie. You really want to pretend the fact everyone will know you got out-dpssed by a healer won't drive people to get better at dpsing?

If I started to be treated like a piriah because I got out-dpsed by a holy priest as a mage of any kind where everyone could see, I think I'd want to up my performance. I would realize I'm doing something VERY wrong.

I've out-dpsed a DRG on single target as a SCH in arbetorium, and I'm sure that guy wasn't aware that he needed help until I let him know. You know what else would help his awareness? A readily available DAMAGE METER.

Recount as a tool was most useful for measuring personal rotation performance. It's actual use in measuring the quality of a player was very unreliable.

Recount also had death logs, and 'damage taken' features, so no, you're actually wrong about that. If someone died to something, it's just as easy to see where they took damage they shouldn't have, and how long they went without healing down to fractions of a second. That was helpful for singling out a certain shitty shaman who kept killing himself to mechanics vs sindragosa back in icecrown citadel because he wouldn't stop attacking the boss when it kept giving him a stacking DOT. I referred to recount to see it in detail.

You call that unreliable?