5 reasons why PS4 players need a parser in game

[Nyxn607]

Some people improving the playstyle is their part of funt too? Is it fun being bad in game for me? Hell no, so ofc I love when I know I improved and keep doing so. It's fun for me and it's fun for people who wish to improve too.

People can improve their play style without a parser. Is it useful to show someone that they can improve their rotation? Maybe. Do parser's lead to issues with harassment? Definitely. The fact is, a parser already exists as a third party system for PC. It doesn't need to exist on PS4. If it is such a great tool, SE would have added it in by now.

"Fun" is a flexible term. So, your definition of fun, will not mean the same thing as another person's definition of fun. For example, you find a parser to be "fun." I find a parser to be a life sucking tool on the game. It is all about opinion and past experience's or lack their of in other MMO's.

[Altena]

I think people should stop bringing this up - not because parsers are bad but because the current climate for the use of parsers is reasonably healthy.
I say that because the current "blind eye" approach that SE are taking toward parsers means that people still use them, and allow for an improved skill level for all (by people figuring out optimal rotations, and for self-development etc etc).. However harassment based on parsers is deemed against ToS, so this is kept at a minimum currently..

The more people talk about it, the more likely this climate will change, and potentially in a very negative way.

It sucks for PS4 players that you can't get a personal parser, but there are other tools in the game, discounting getting a friend to parse on PC for you, that give you a "decent enough" indication of how you are performing in comparison to everyone else.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

In my opinion PS4 players have the inferior experience when it comes to raiding vs a PC players many benefits

In my experience I have never found myself at any kind of disadvantage to a PC player while raiding or playing in PvP matches. To be fair, I do make active efforts to play and perform well, with the means available to me. If such a vast disparity between PC and PS4 existed, it might possibly warrant separate game servers, but such isn't the case.

Still, without making this a PC/Console debate, your mileage may vary. Not every PC runs the game perfectly, not every PS4 player is disadvantaged for not having parser access, and both sides have varying levels of player ability.

[Yeol]

Having an in game parse will not make players get better. Reading your skills and using them properly will.

Parse is helpful to those who are testing different kind of openers and rotations. Wearing the same item level but with different stats to compare results, it helps to have better understanding for stats and their weights.

Rest of the community are mostly reading and implementing guides, you don't need a parse for that. Practice the rotation and go to Stone, Sky, Sea to test yourself. Would be helpful if Stone, Sky, Sea showed a summary at the end with your crit rate and number of misses since these two affect your dps the most.

[Sebazy]

The issue here is finding a means to promote good standards of play that balances the wishes and styles of both sides of the community.

SSS was a bust in this regard, it's irrelevant to current content (I see it as an answer to Gordias, but I doubt we will see the likes that again, it'll be very interesting to see clear statistics between A4S and A12S) and there's no incentive to use it. Perhaps a better way of looking at this is to consider a way to take the toolkit SSS offers and apply it in a more useful and prominent way.

Perhaps a good compromise here would be to require a player to speak to the SSS npc to get parsed in their next instance? Stone, Sky, Sea, Satchel!

Incentives are a little trickier though, my immediate first thought would be to add achievements for hitting high numbers in various bits of content, but that would fail almost immediately at the first hurdle due to how more casual players will view that. A more balanced approach might be to throw it in the saucer and reward some MGP for getting a 'daily parse'.

I'll openly admit that something like this isn't going to make players better by itself, but then no one approach is ever going to achieve that alone, rather the idea here is to set the spark of interest that gets the ball rolling, thus hopefully getting a better percentage of the player base taking some interest and care in their performance in team content. Couple this with other angles such as content that showcases new abilities as you get them and the ARR trick of using 4 man dungeon bosses to demonstrate EX/Savage mechanics in a more forgiving form and I genuinely think it would be a good step forward towards bringing the player base closer together. They managed a great job of this with ARR's launch and I firmly believe Yoshida can do it again <3

Finally, the key here is finding a good compromise between both sides of the coin, flat out wishing that parsing was gone is as much of a disservice to the community as wanting to throw logs rankings on the front page of the lodestone. Having optional, discrete and non gated but reasonably incentivised content that can help players to improve can only a good thing in my eyes.

[XiXiQ]

I think I know why SE don't want parsers, and we'll likely never see them in game. It's not a level playing field, and never will be. You can have the same player, same skill, parse them at sub 50ms, then at 150/200/300. There will be a marked difference based on ping alone.

[Reiryuu]

I think I know why SE don't want parsers, and we'll likely never see them in game. It's not a level playing field, and never will be. You can have the same player, same skill, parse them at sub 50ms, then at 150/200/300. There will be a marked difference based on ping alone.

One of the reasons they have said is that they don't want people to be able to reverse engineer the damage formulas. Whether that's a true concern of theirs or not doesn't really matter to me. I am in agreement with them and think that parsers will be more detrimental than good if they are "legalized" per se.

[Tigerlilley]

Hey OP, I was a former ps4 player.
Been raiding since T4 was a thing, back on my PS3 then switched to PS4 from T5 to A8S.

Some of the most frustrating times I had was leveling new classes. I couldn't see if the opener I was doing was ok, I couldn't try new things because I had zero point of reference.

I didn't know if I was contributing meaningfully to the group dps in content. I'd ask for my parse after every fight during raid. Also during raid, I couldn't see where I was losing dps so I couldn't see any parts of the fight I could improve on which was especially rough in Gordias.

I was lucky enough to get some $ for a gaming PC so I switched. I will never go back to PS4, ONLY because of my parser. I do not find playing a "blind" dps fun. It's allowed me to literally get better as a player.

So yea, I agree with you. It sucks for PS4 players, it really does. I genuinely hope some sort of meaningful meter is installed in game, whether it just be on a target dummy or not.

[TheCount]

Right because we totally should force the aids that is parsing on ps4 players as well. Face it, the devs don't want this to become min-max "oh you missed the ability that one time /kick" shit.

[Lambdafish]

In my experience I have never found myself at any kind of disadvantage to a PC player while raiding or playing in PvP matches.

Maybe not, but (and I think the OP explained this poorly) you are disadvantaged in your freedom to use one. Just because you don't need or want it doesn't stop you being in a disadvantageous position, there may come a time when you want to use one to check damage calculations against a friend, and can't simply because of your platform of choice. Parsers are useful, to some not necessary, but they are definitely a good tool that is only available to half of the playerbase.

Right because we totally should force the aids that is parsing on ps4 players as well. Face it, the devs don't want this to become min-max "oh you missed the ability that one time /kick" shit.

That depends how they design the parser, I can think of several ways to design a parser that doesn't cause min-max problems.