Harassing Healers - or: Please allow Parsers

[Iromi]

They could just fix the battle system so you can see who isn't picking up their slack. In FFXI we never needed a parser to see..lol it was always obvious, regardless of the job. It's not the lack of a parser..its the battle system...

[Kosmos992k]

Since it seems to be okay to harass healers who play subpar even in the official forums (healer dps topics all over the place), the argument against parsers is invalid.

Either allow the harassment of ALL roles or do something to >stop< the harassment of ALL roles

So basically to prevent toxic hostility and harassment you want an official in game tool to enable other forms of hostility and harassment? Yeah, that's not very logical.

[Shougun]

So basically to prevent toxic hostility and harassment you want an official in game tool to enable other forms of hostility and harassment? Yeah, that's not very logical.

It's already enabled though (parser are already "allowed", people are already tracked, meta being examined). You're already getting it, but from the shadows instead. I'd rather see my enemies, make allies, and maybe give logic to some complaints rather than vague hand waiving and stealth vote kicks.

We're now just missing information and equal footing. Information is power :/

[dragonseth07]

"We, as a community, can be the type of people that complain after a clear!"
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.
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"Wait, that's not an improvement at all? It is sad and pointless? But my cutthroat and critical personality can only benefit the game!"

We can be the type of people that enjoy every instance, instead of walking away from DF frustrated by the community.

When you get a great group in DF, it's a great experience. When you get a terrible group, it's a bad experience. Nobody walks away from a 45-minute Stone Vigil run happy.

We can promote the community to improve, to make every group a good one.

[Kallera]

We can be the type of people that enjoy every instance, instead of walking away from DF frustrated by the community.

When you get a great group in DF, it's a great experience. When you get a terrible group, it's a bad experience. Nobody walks away from a 45-minute Stone Vigil run happy.

We can promote the community to improve, to make every group a good one.

In a word, no, you cannot.

And if you tried, it's going to clash with people that do not care to play by your standards for one reason or another. You are not the devs, and even they cannot get people to play by their standards.

[SenorPatty]

How about we drop the healer meme trend that has never has or never will go away (until game design changes DF) before it reaches 60 pages again


Kthx

[Kosmos992k]

Parsers again....oh boy.

First, a parser is simply a tool that provides a data point about your performance. It does not judge the conditions, nor count any intangibles that happened, the circumstances are irrelevant only the number matters. It can't teach you how to be better, it can't make you want to do better, and it can't help you dodge AoEs or handle mechanics more effectively. But, it can give you a number.

Second, even within this topic there are people who have indicated that they very much would use a parser as a tool to beat other players over the head - other players who they consider are not pulling their weight. An in-game parser would potentially legitimize this behavior.

Thirdly - only players that already want to do better will do better, and guess what, anyone seeking to get better will find a way to improve, with or without a parser. Players that don't want to get better or who are very casual and only want to play through story content will more than likely not care at all about the numbers some parser spits out as long as they get a dungeon clear.

Fourth, there is a lot of sentiment in this topic talking about carrots and sticks, or rather incentives and punishment. I can almost guarantee that if your method of trying to improve other players is led by potential punishment for not meeting an arbitrary standard, you will not achieve any improvement. Remember the third point above, only people who want to improve will improve. Parser numbers are nothing but tools of harassment when used against players who do not wish to improve.

Fifth, who decides what number from the parser is considered acceptable? There is no universal standard beyond clearing or not clearing content. Trying to force other players to meet an arbitrary standard you set is not helping them improve, it's all about making them fit your idea of what they should be.

A private personal parser that allows players to view their own performance is one thing. It is a private learning tool that can be used to examine your own performance over a range of conditions. A group parser might be useful in end-game content where high DPS checks must be met, but in general you already know if someone is playing grossly below par, why do you need a parser to tell that?

In my opinion, this all comes down to the general approach. In the NA/EU community, it feels that there is a negative approach to player standard where the most common thought is about making other perform better for your own convenience, and kicking/avoiding them if they do not improve. People want a parser to *prove* to other players that they are bad and must improve or be kicked. That's not really a coaching methodology, it's more about issuing ultimatums.

The OP framed this under the banner of improving the community. I think that the community would be vastly improved if instead everyone took a more positive approach of complimenting others when they play well, of encouraging skill use by saying how useful it was when the player did 'X', or any of about a quintillion other ways to use positive re-inforcement instead of negative.

At the same time, be honest about everyone's mistakes - including our own - but try not to be confrontational. So instead of "hey you jerk watch the aoEs you were standing in stupid and died, git gud!" it could be "I hate those AoEs, it so easy to step in one by mistake, gotta watch out for them, I almost got caught myself." Both ways convey the same message - be more careful of AoE markers and get out of them. Which one would you rather hear?

As for in-game mechanisms I would prefer a carrot to a stick. Perhaps they could include some enhanced battle logging for personal use to allow us to monitor our damage output more closely, but keeping it private to prevent it from becoming a stick with which to beat others. More than that there need to be some carrots. This could be as simple as some form of visual/audible feedback when the game client sees you complete a skill combination for maximum effect, more visibility for critical hits, achievements related to skill use - perhaps rewarding titles or a minion in the long run.

Another idea I have is to create an affinity system for status effects so that multiple debuffs on enemies 'synergize' to become longer lasting or more effective - accompanied by an audible/visual cue to let players know their combined efforts worked well. The same thing with buffs on players or parties, where multiple buffs interact to either become stronger or longer lasting with an audible/visual cue. This would reward parties for working together and using their support skills in combination - something that always seems to be a point of contention when performance is discussed.

Anyway, I just think that instead of equipping ourselves with tools to use against other players, we ought to be adopting a different approach that includes complimenting and rewarding better performance instead.

It's already enabled though (parser are already "allowed", people are already tracked, meta being examined). You're already getting it, but from the shadows instead. I'd rather see my enemies, make allies, and maybe give logic to some complaints rather than vague hand waiving and stealth vote kicks.

We're now just missing information and equal footing. Information is power :/

It's not allowed, using parser data against another player is highly reportable, and GMs will take action. Adding an in-game parser does little more than hand players a stick to beat others with, and legitimizes something that is currently bannable.

Information is powerful, it's also dangerous. Information mis-used is a weapon, not a tool.

They could just fix the battle system so you can see who isn't picking up their slack. In FFXI we never needed a parser to see..lol it was always obvious, regardless of the job. It's not the lack of a parser..its the battle system...

To be fair, it's pretty obvious already. Icemage exists as a concept for a reason, Bards who never sing and stick to heavy shot are clear as day, etc...

It's also pretty difficult to effectively set DPS targets for tanks and healers since their core functions are related to something else. How much damage should a healer do? How much should they do when DPS is weak and stands in AoEs? It's situational.

There will always be lazy players, and we've seen many people claiming to have watch healers dancing uring fights when they don't have to heal (for example), so clearly it's possible to identify people not tying very hard already. But no parser will ever make such players better. But I could see people using parsers to blacklist other players because they fall below a certain baseline of damage dealt. When players start doing that sort of thing, the community is hurting itself.

Granted I've never come across these 'Healers who don't Heal' types because usually the ones who are good at Healing will swap in/out of Cleric Stance while keeping the party alive. I digress, just wanted to make that point clear that Healer DPS, which can go as high as 1700 on a Boss, isn't trivial, it's worth it. At the end of the day, depends on your playstyle, and in terms of ilvl, your average player should be minimum i260 by now anyway, maybe i255 at the minimum.

I call BS on that. Average players are no where near i260. In my opinion, suggesting that i255/i260 is average gear is asinine.

[Shougun]

It's not allowed, using parser data against another player is highly reportable, and GMs will take action. Adding an in-game parser does little more than hand players a stick to beat others with, and legitimizes something that is currently bannable.

Information is powerful, it's also dangerous. Information mis-used is a weapon, not a tool.

Parsing is not a ban-able offence in of itself - Yoshida has specifically gone on record on how they approach this issue (with guides off official forums with open names that they'll never do anything about), and adding a parser into the game doesn't mean you get a free pass to harass people. Adding parser does not require a new GM stipulation "players can say whatever they want if its about parsing", griefing is still griefing.

So it doesn't legitimize something that is ban-able. Just to reiterate, adding parsers does not legitimize harassment. Harassment is still ban-able.

You can still report it and GMs can still do something about it. "Hey, Mog2 - I noticed your damage is a bit low because you're not using your DoT, watch your damage as you weave it in" vs "OMG HEALER NOOB CANT DAMAGE, WHAT AN IDIOT!!!" clearly one is still going to cause issues. Technically both can be done already but its so much easier to have a conversation/learn/and teach when you actually have information to reference rather than waving at a semi-tangible sort of there block of information. Also people could say "yeah they didn't damage a lot but look they have very little over heal and incredibly high healing, how about you stop standing in all of the AoEs so they can actually do damage" (an important moment in raid learning lol).

Everything becomes more fact based, and we already have the damage of parsers as I said its already a thing because SE has already allowed it to be a thing. People will just give you crap without actually saying "parse" or using direct numbers.

All SE has managed to do with their stance is fog our information.

All it will change (from what we already have) is allow everyone to better learn and teach, if they want, increasing the average player ability. Also would allow for better balancing discussions, "Hey SE, look this job is factually worse" rather than "I feel I do less AoE damage" and SE says "it's great, trust us". The issues, which parsers do bring, are already here made full by the fact SE has gone out of their way to say you wont be banned for it (and the report-able issues wont change by giving us better information, that some people already have access to). An aside you said highly banable but I've talked to people who've let known they use a parse and thrashed someone for not meeting their standards, the punishment is pretty mellow (but maybe depends on the GM/number of offences). Personally think people shouldn't be rude to each other but the rude people will still be rude regardless of information, I'd rather be able to improve/teach/understand and not have some vague nearly useless glazed window between players, their characters, and SE.

Its true information can be a weapon, but seeing as people are already stabbing each other might as well be stabbed by the truth lol (and you can report them for stabbing you anyways XD). "Thanks, now go get rekt by the GM".

[Hyperia]

I love how people think that healer dps can make everything go so much better. The reason why things go so much better is that the others in the group are not making any mistakes, near perfect dps and have the best gear. Thus, the healers have lots of down time to dps. On most of the content I run on raids, it's progression and this everybody is making mistakes or learning. There is no downtime to dps, it's either lots of healing or regenning mana so our mch does not have to promote. the only time you see me doing dps is at the start, then I am solo healing half the time and duo healing the rest. If your not in a world / server first class group, your always going to be busy as a healer.

[Kosmos992k]

Parsing is not a ban-able offence in of itself - Yoshida has specifically gone on record on how they approach this issue (with guides off official forums with open names that they'll never do anything about), and adding a parser into the game doesn't mean you get a free pass to harass people. Adding parser does not require a new GM stipulation "players can say whatever they want if its about parsing", griefing is still griefing.

I said;

using parser data against another player is highly reportable, and GMs will take action

There is a "don't ask don't tell" policy on the use of parsers. However, parser users who brag about it in chat or use it against other players can be and have been banned. Strictly speaking, use of third party tools is explicitly against the rules.

So it doesn't legitimize something that is ban-able. Just to reiterate, adding parsers does not legitimize harassment. Harassment is still ban-able.

Adding a parser that goes beyond a personal use private parsing tool is handing a weapon to the community and hoping they all use it appropriately - which of course they will not. By handing that weapon to the community, use of it is automatically legitimized, while at the moment use of parsers is technically against the rules, and abuse of them is actively enforced.

You can still report it and GMs can still do something about it. "Hey, Mog2 - I noticed your damage is a bit low because you're not using your DoT, watch your damage as you weave it in" vs "OMG HEALER NOOB CANT DAMAGE, WHAT AN IDIOT!!!" clearly one is still going to cause issues. Technically both can be done already but its so much easier to have a conversation/learn/and teach when you actually have information to reference rather than waving at a semi-tangible sort of there block of information. Also people could say "yeah they didn't damage a lot but look they have very little over heal and incredibly high healing, how about you stop standing in all of the AoEs so they can actually do damage".

Why should anyone have to report it? It shouldn't be happening in the first place. Look, this player community has shown time and again that it will abuse whatever features are implemented in the game for personal gain. A parser would be no different.

Everything becomes more fact based, and we already have the damage of parsers as I said its already a thing because SE has already allowed it to be a thing. People will just give you crap without actually saying "parse" or using direct numbers.

Adding actual numbers will do nothing to help that situation. Confrontation-ally arguing that someone is playing poorly will never go well, with or without parser numbers. But, providing an official parser that enables such confrontation could encourage that very behavior.

All SE has managed to do with their stance is fog our information.

And parsing isn't ban-able. All it does is allow everyone to better learn and teach, if they want, increasing the average player ability. Also would allow for better balancing discussions, "Hey SE, look this job is factually worse" rather than "I feel I do less AoE damage" and SE says "it's great, trust us".

No, actually parsing *is* banable. People have been banned for using parsers, it all comes down to context and whether someone reports it. Technically it's against the conditions you agree to when you sign up. If someone complains about it, it's very possible that you could be banned simply for using a parser and talking about it in-game.

I used to argue completely against parsers, and still feel they are of very limited use and are potentially dangerous. But I think it's interesting that parser debates are always all or nothing affairs where pro-parser debaters will accept nothing less than full group, public parsing for all. I've changed my position before now to say that *if* parsers were officially implemented, a private, personal parsing tool could be useful to some, and would be hard to abuse, and so would be acceptable to me. But such a suggestion is always shot down because it will not let people (Edit : like you )people who support a broad public parser in-game, use parser data against other players. That reveals the true motive here.

It always comes back to wanting to use the numbers from a parser as a stick to beat others with. I don't find that to be a very positive thing.