Because everyone Loves Parsers

[Rongway]

how to do good dps under stress and movement.

Telling someone "your DPS is low" won't reduce the effect of stress, and you don't need a parser to see when people are dying or getting hit by avoidable things.

[dragonseth07]

Telling someone "your DPS is low" won't reduce the effect of stress, and you don't need a parser to see when people are dying or getting hit by avoidable things.

Nobody will suddenly learn and improve by being told they are underperforming.

What does happen is that it makes players stop being lazy, because they know they've been found out. I've had plenty of DF-mates start actually playing after being called out, because they knew a kick was coming if they didn't.

[Sylvain]

Nobody will suddenly learn and improve by being told they are underperforming.

But no one can stop underperforming if they believe they're actually performing.

I've had several case of pug DPS actually complaining about the dps when they were in fact at the very bottom of the parser.
So... this is also a good example why a perser might be needed. Because there are plenty of people under performing without knowing it.
There should definitely be restrictions, but knowing your own performance in a fight doesn't seem to be too much to ask.

And it doesn't only goes for DPS, healer and tank too could make a great use of knowing either their HpS / overheal or damage taken.

[AmeliaVerves]

And it doesn't only goes for DPS, healer and tank too could make a great use of knowing either their HpS / overheal or damage taken.

To me, this would be the best improvement a parser brings!
Showing healers 'Hey, dude, it's nice to keep your group topped off, but... well, you are overhealing 80% of the time. So, 80% of your heals are not even needed! Time to overthink your strat!'
Or for the tanks: 'Bro, you have a healer in your team, but the amount of incoming damage is too damn high! Use your defensive CDs!'
Sure, those people wont become awesome players within a second, but it would definetly help opening their eyes and help them to improve and train their skills!

[Laraul]

But as far as the general game experience as a whole is concerned, adding an in game damage tracker only serves to make it easier to harass people.

You stop harassment by reporting the harasser to a GM, not by preventing people from parsing.

The common claim that parsers increase player harassment lacks any real evidence that backs it up anyway. It's a misconception.

[Jpec07]

With the new job-specific UI elements they're adding in Stormblood (they were compared to WeakAuras from WoW), I wonder if they'll be adding some non-numeric tracker of performance. Everyone wants a parser, but a parser by itself has limitations in that you have no idea how good the number it shows is without going and checking Google (or Bing, if you're weird). Parsers also don't usually account for decisions you make that can impact your team (like applying a piercing debuff to help out your BRD, or a NIN keeping the slashing debuff up for the PLD/DRK).

If instead they listed your performance in terms of global percentile (possibly even not giving it an actual number), accounting for things like dodging AoE, buffing the party, putting vulnerabilities on enemies, negating damage, and the like, considering also the circumstances like item level and mob count (possibly even tracking mob to mob), I would think it would be a more helpful indicator of performance.

The common claim that parsers increase player harassment lacks any real evidence that backs it up anyway. It's a misconception.

I wouldn't say it's necessarily a misconception, or that it lacks any evidence at all. It's just that the evidence we have is all circumstantial or hearsay, and not objectively quantifiable. No one has done a controlled study of it, so we really cannot make claims either way. Because of this, though, the burden of proof lies with the anti-parser folks.

I don't even know if companies have been keeping the required data, or if they'd allow someone to study it to find meaningful conclusions (namely looking at Blizzard here, since they have the largest sample size).

[dragonseth07]

I don't even know if companies have been keeping the required data, or if they'd allow someone to study it to find meaningful conclusions (namely looking at Blizzard here, since they have the largest sample size).

I can basically guarantee that Blizzard has that data for internal use. Many online gaming companies have entire departments dedicated to analyzing player behavior and psychology. Riot games had at least one neuroscience PhD that would post on their forums from time to time when I last played LoL.

[Jpec07]

I can basically guarantee that Blizzard has that data for internal use. Many online gaming companies have entire departments dedicated to analyzing player behavior and psychology. Riot games had at least one neuroscience PhD that would post on their forums from time to time when I last played LoL.

I wonder how willing they'd be to share it, then. I'm sure they've drawn their own conclusions (comparing use of certain add-ons and/or combinations of add-ons to rates at which players are reported for harassment), but it would be interesting to actually see the data.

EDIT: I believe the other reason SE has been shying away from using parsers is that the community would start to use that number of their DPS to determine whether or not they can enjoy the game or a specific job/class (rather than whether they actually enjoy the gameplay components).

[rockint]

I suppose you never entered a Savage raid and you never did Gordios savage. If you did, you would have never said that last sentence.

Or even any normal (hard) primal or 24 man... SE LOVES DPS checks.

Yeah, I'll admit, from playing other games (haven't been serious enough about FFXIV), I know we've all called out people who were too low on DPS, mainly because there was a minimum required to mathematically kill the boss and they weren't putting in their fair share, so we wiped, over and over. On a boss where everyone has to average 1k DPS for this phase or we wipe, and we keep wiping while the blm is only doing 500 DPS and the utility isn't buffing anyone's damage, questioning his damage because of parsing it would be fair. Why have DPS checks if there's no way to know where you need to improve? These phases exist in the game specifically because your performance matters.