Quote Originally Posted by Xlantaa View Post
It is a god way to detect them and blacklist/kick from party. :P

The major fear here is not having or not parsers. The problem here is the creation of a DPS obsesed community. Parses has pros? of course. But the problem here, and I think people is ignoring it deliverately, is the creation of this DPS community.

Think on the speedruns. Speedruns has becoming the usually strat for almost dungeon (with excetions like low level dungeon, and even here I see peopel trying to speerun it), ignoring mechanics like kill adds or avoid damag to be able to finish quick. Meybe beause the dugeons does not offer actuall challengue, ro the community is just impatient, whatever, is not the point here. First, the Speedruns was a thing for some people in determinated dungeons (remember the infamous Blayflox Hard), but little by little, it started become the norm, the only way to do a dungeon, to the point that on every roulette people is doing it, even if new people is running for the first time, they jsut ignore them and demanding big pulls, and sometimes, get angered because someone refuses it. This is the common thing in dungeons/trials now.
The reason we do not speedrun low level dungeons is not because of the fact that we do not want to. It's because it is wildly impractical to speedrun low level dungeons. Think of any pre-30 dungeons you get.

Most TP-using classes won't have reliable AoE DPS (DRG's don't get theirs until 30+, SMN's don't get bane until 30+, etc...)

Not only that, gear is even more felt inside low level dungeons. You're given an ilevel spread of 3 ilevels in leveling dungeons. Compare this to the spread of ilevels you get inside of level 50 and 60 dungeons. In this dungeons, you have spreads of potentially 30-40+ ilevels. This is pretty massive by comparison! And that gap helps us speed run.

That isnt' to say we don't do minor speed run tricks inside of leveling dungeons, however! It's all about efficiency for players! For example. When I do my leveling dungeon, I go as a SCH. Why? Because I can DPS the whole time if I do. That attributes to a speed run. If I tank for a freind, and I see we have a SMN, I'll pick up 2 groups instead of 1. Why? Because Bane can then hit the full amount of full-potency targets + do the minor-potency targets at the same time.

If we have TP classes, I of course keep it to one at a time, and play more aggressively as a tank. Turning off tank stance, for example, to do extra damage is not uncommon in pre-50 dungeons (Though for most of them you won't even /have/ tank stance.) This is another factor of speed running. People want to get things done fast. Parsers are a tool within that purpose, but they are not the cause of it.

You can extrapolate this to the parses. At the beggining, parses are used in a specifics things, like DPs improvement for some people, Ex primals or High level raiding, but little by little, this will be extend to the low level content, people will start demanding a specific number of DPS (like they started demanding speedrun). In the beggining, will be 1000 of this kind of palyers, then this palyers become 2000, then 4000, then 10000, then 20000, this will extend to all the game. Then we will have a new rule. Dungeons/trials must be done in X time, and also, people must have X DPS or they suck.
While you could, in theory, suggest that this is, in part, due to Parses, I do not necessarily agree with such an idea. I believe that, more than anything else, this has to do with two factors:

1) Player Comfort.
This is a big one for me. Back when 2.0 launched and all we had was the initial dungeons + initial raid, and everyone was slowly fighting their way up the ilevel totem poll, and the game was <new> and <shiny> to everyone, people were a lot more careful. Content felt harder to us, as players, and thus we reacted in kind - they proceeded more cautiously.

However, Even back during 2.0, speed runs still existed. Our method of handling Speed Runs, however, was different. Take, for example, Amdapor Keep - we would consistent do Sac Pulls. This has nothing to do with a DPS community. It merely had to do with a Min/Maxing community. Because of the caps that SE put on gear for every week, Players became obsessed with maximizing their time.

2) Square Enix's insistance on slowing runs down as much as possible
Remember Amdapor Keep when it first came out? People would sac pull to the end, sacrifice the paladin, raising, and then continuing on to fight the boss. Can you attribute this action to parses? Not in the least. It's all about time and efficiency.

And Square Enix Did what they could to 'fix' that, which is what winds up making us do large pulls instead:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/71744-NA-FINAL-FANTASY-XIV-Hotfixes-%28Apr.-21-2016%29?p=1246517&viewfull=1#post1246517

Changes have been made to the behavior and mechanics of the enemies found within the “The Wanderer’s Palace” and “Amdapor Keep” dungeons to counteract instances of players running through the dungeon without engaging enemies on the way to bosses.

As advancing through dungeons without defeating enemies is not an intended strategy, we plan to continue making further changes in the future to discourage this type of behavior.


3) Player Gear
Once more I want to go back to Brayflox and take a look at the differences between it, and the original Amdapor Keep. When Brayflox came out, we didn't speed run it due to a parser community. Rather, we speed ran it because we became able to speed run it. Our understanding from two patches of the game had taught us how to handle AoE pulls. But not only that, our gear as a whole had started to out pace the patches.

Most players were at a reasonable ilevel at this point. And thus, the method for speedrunning would start becomming more and more common. You wouldn't have to wait and find specific people to go speedrunning - you could do it with anyone, in DF. The tactic became more and more popular amongst the community, and it had nothing to do with parsing. Rather, it had entirely to do with our gear, comfort, and the design of dungeons.

Ultimately, you can say it happened as well due to videos of speed runs becoming popular, and people integrating that into DF. Speed runs of Amdapor Keep weren't as common before we saw videos of it. That's just how a community works.

Now, think on the casual palyers, This ones can improve, but some of the, just no, doesn' have time or they jsut want run a dungeon and do others things. This casualsprobably will rerepsent the 50% of the total players. Do you think is a good idea harras them in this way? If they see the game turn into a DPS race, they probalby won't continue playing. THat's less moeny for FFXIV. Guess who will pay the consequences and who will lose content...
Here, however, is another issue I have. You attempt to suggest 'Think of the Casuals!' but let's be fair - do you really think they would be bothered by a Parser within the environment?

I am of the belief that most players in this game are mature enough not to harass people with it. Right now, the only reason you can reasonably state "the only people who harass people about their DPS are people with parses", is because of the fact that only people with parsers can see dps numbers. It'd be impossible for anyone else to see. This also completely neglects the entire subsect of people who don't harass people while using a parser, or hell - like myself, even compliment others when we see amazing dps, and can use our parser to see without watching one person like a hawk that someone might be underperforming.

What parsers do, as a whole, is improve the community, because it gives us a metric by which to say "Hey, you're struggling at X Y Z points, what's going on? Anything I can do to help?" And this is something that has often left my lips while running things with others, particularly during dungeons. It's enabled me to see at a glance, quicker, when someone is underperforming, and move to assist them.

Furthermore, without a parser, there is very little input for a casual player. The type of casual player you are suggesting, will likely be the type that subs for a month, gets all the content 'done' (Runs it once), and then stops playing. This is not the type of Casual Player you can hope to retain. However, there is a seperate subsect of casual players that - just as the hardcore player - will have a 'hook.'

This hook is called progression. For a casual player, since they're not pushing raids and pushing their DPS during raids, the only way for a casual player to see progression is in the minor ilevel increases, as well as doing better at dungeons. Some casual players enjoy seeing their numbers - as stated by a number of them in this thread.

This is the problem I see. Not the parser itself, but he fear to turn the community into a Parsed obsessed one, like happenend in other MMO before.
People state "Like what happened in the other MMO's", but I have yet to see any of them give a genuine source on this. It's been contested many times that parsers existed in many of these communities long before they became toxic.

Quite the contrary, one user suggested it wasn't the parsers that made the communities grow toxic, but the use of gearscore in one such case - such as WoW.

Now, my question is, how can we stop the bad using on the parsers? How can we avoid turn all the content in a DPS race? The only possible way, is allow parsers only on determianted things, like preformed parties or high level content, and prohibited it in any other thing, like rouelttes. But, people is demanding the parser FOR ALL content.

For me, is clear. I like have a parser, but, I'm aware this will cause more problems than benefics. So, I say no or personal parser only for this reason, not because I hate parsing, but because I fear the game turn into a crap shit DPS obsesed.

I'm sure if this problem wasn't a thing, most people wil lagree on having it, becaus there was no problems and won't affect negativity to anyone.
The way to handle it is not necessarily to prohibit its use just because some people might misuse it. That is what is referred to as punishing everyone for the actions of some. Instead, focus your sights on the players that use it to harass people.

What Square Enix truly needs, is clear and defined rules for how to handle the parser. You should not be allowed to harass someone. Let's think about this for example:

Let's say you have a summoner. You're doing big, AoE pulls, and the summoner is pulling in 1000 DPS. Everyone has access to the parser, can see this, and in a perfect world, here is what would happen: You would tell them they're underpulling on DPS a little, and ask if they understand how to do AoE DPS.

WHAT SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN: You see that 1000 DPS, say "OMFG U ARE SO HORRIBLE **** U ****ING SUCK! BOOT!" and then they get booted.

The second example should never happen. And in the cases it does, those that do that should be punished with temp-bans. Harassment, regardless of using a tool, needs to be treated as what it is: Harassment.

You have to accept you can never fully prevent harassment, and punishing the majority for the sake of preventing the minority will never be a good solution!


PD: Sorry for my bad english.
Permit me to say, your english is quite beautiful. I would not of known it was 'bad' in your eyes less you said it, so - have some more confidence in yourself! Just be like "x3 Muh english is *****in'!'