In competition with myself: a request for PERSONAL parsers

[Sebazy]

I have no problems with personal parsers, as long as it becomes a actionable offense to demand someone elses numbers.

Agreed, SE implementing personal parsers would definitely need some kind of caveat to the order of covering the misuse and abuse of the data it provides. Whilst I do feel that DPS need to be a little more accountable for their performance in high end content that actually warrants it, there does need to be a middle ground here to keep things civil, SE are typically very good at handling in game harassment so I suspect as long as this was kept as an actionable offence as it is now, people would learn very quickly (Or simply get banned if they don't, win win IMHO!).

You want a personal... parser?
Go hit the dps check statues and see how much time left you have on them.

SSS is a horrible flawed concept that had only minor relevance to the content at hand during Gordias and arguably has little to none now. There's no provision to handle pushing or holding DPS as appropriate (Hi Cruise Chaser & Zurvan), nor is there any effort made at teaching a player how to maintain their APM and minimise disconnects during mechanics, something which is fundamental to performing well.

Not to mention, as a healer main, SSS is about as useful as a means to judge how long my keyboard is going to survive as it is any indicator of my performance in raids. It's not fit for purpose, not even slightly.

Or maybe just make a color indicator for the party memeber names in the UI, so it will take the total damage done and compare it to total damage done by the party.

Whilst I'd personally quite like this, I could imagine a lot of people objecting to it. I can very quickly link a multitude of recent expert roulettes where I've personally been doing 35% or more of the damage myself as the healer. Whilst it wouldn't make much of a difference to me as I can already see that as is and frankly it doesn't really bother me, I suspect it might play on under performing player's nerves a little, will they worry that I'm about to start chewing them out at any moment? It'd work a little better if it was personal only and displayed on your HP/MP/TP bar instead (That near useless icon just to the left!). Granted, the question would be then be a case of if anyone took any notice of it =/

If SE want to put a parser, they would by now. Good devs don't though. Why? Because it's a restriction to how they can change or design fights. Think a boss who will hit harder if you hit them hard or reactively put up shields. Sure -you- get better but your party won't and take the hit. They would anyway if your only purpose is getting better on damage. Good dancing > 2 bigger left feet.

It's a team mode, anything personal isn't good. And most importantly, this is a video game. It's all assigned numbers, you're not supposed to get better. Michael Jordan never beat himself, just ask EA.

What?

We've had the 'mechanic hits harder or weaker depending on your dps' thing already, back in A3S, whilst it was the reverse of what you're saying, it was also one hell of a hurdle during early progression and even more so later on for more casual groups. Honestly, getting past that mechanic during 3.0 without a single parser in the group is quite a feat. The vast majority needed at least one to start helping optimise things or the group would simply hit a wall with it.

A team's individual skill is the foundation upon which the party's overall performance is built upon. Good party damage is a by-product of a player who can maintain high APM and minimise disconnects during mechanics. Being able to dance is also a vital skill, but once you move up from 24 mans and into EX/Savage and then early Savage progression, it quickly becomes only part of the picture.

Your comments about RNG order of actions betray your knowledge (or lack of?) of how the end game actually works. End game RNG is little more than a case of picking from two or three attacks during a mechanic, or the direction in which an aoe or cleave goes. Whilst the mechanic might target different people, it's not really RNG when that mechanic always happens at the same point. A11's often wild variance was purely down to how different players would push the multitude of little phases at differing speeds, it was all scripted at the end of the day.

[Nedkel]

Whilst I'd personally quite like this, I could imagine a lot of people objecting to it. I can very quickly link a multitude of recent expert roulettes where I've personally been doing 35% or more of the damage myself as the healer. Whilst it wouldn't make much of a difference to me <cut 1000>

Without knowing that, they will never get better, since a big part of casual players just spam few buttons thinking thats all what they could do, this thing actually happens in other mmo games too.
Thats good if they will feel ashamed by their performance known by everyone in the team, someone need a kick in the butt to know if they need to git gut or are they gut enough.
The boundary of 30% contribution is not really high and as a dps the man could do it easly unless he doesnt care at all.
Dps damage is high in this game overall, so let them know when they socks.
Tanks and healer know when they did bad, let the others experience the same, that may sound cruel, but it is the only way to mobilize happy casuals to actually contribute into the team based mission.

[Hasrat]

Without knowing that, they will never get better

There is no magical solution to getting poor players to perform better. Players that genuinely want to do better will seek out any tools to help them do so. Players that are indifferent will continue to disregard what they don't understand.

I personally find any argument to the effect of "this will help other players" to be anywhere from naive to absurd. If you want a parse to help yourself or your static or friends or whatever, just say so. But, short of 100% hand holding AI takeover, bad players will continue to be bad.

[Laerune]

I thought people wanted the parsers so they can hold underpreformers accountable for their bad play, a personal parser wont change this.

[RichardButte]

I thought people wanted the parsers so they can hold underpreformers accountable for their bad play, a personal parser wont change this.

I'm first and foremost concerned with being able to hold myself accountable.

But the other thing to consider here is that many players (especially more casual ones) may not even know just how much their DPS can shift by changing which abilities they use and in which order.

Having a little DPS counter on screen that goes up or down will be a constant, non-judgemental educator about how to generally perform better at your class.

Let me put this another way: if I were to say, "Most ________s don't even know how important it is to _________ before starting their rotation.", you could fill in the blanks with any NUMBER of class names and actions and you'd probably be right.

Just having that number there to tell you how much damage you're doing would make players say, "Huh, I did way more that time. What did I do differently...?" on a regular enough basis that they'll learn to be better players over time, probably by the time they hit endgame.

[Nedkel]

There is no magical solution to getting poor players to perform better. Players that genuinely want to do better will seek out any tools to help them do so. <cut>.

Its not like everyone out there that is not good enough because they dont care, they also dont know how to or they never looked into any guide for their class.
Someone who see them not performing well could advice them if they see so.
I was adviced by many about the dungeon routes, and still i get advices, but if i would play a dps, who would tell me what i am doing wrong?
I would happly grind up to 60-70 level without realizing i do less dmg than a tank, and get blamed later for damage by parsers.
The game overall will be better with that simple in game parser, so new comers like me or anyone could realize what is a part of my job in a team since the very begining of the game. You cant get better without knowing your ground you are standing at, its easy to tell when you play healer or a tank, but as a dps there is no way you could see it. Encouraging these dps's into doing more will push them to try harder or learn.
Imagine you are playing as dps yourself and you just started playing the game, seeing somebody getting purple and you green will tell you could do much better than that, it will make you thinking what you could improve, pushing you into looking for some guides online.
And a third party parse is not a solution, a lot of people believe they could get easly banned for using it or just simply cant because they are on console.

[akaneakki]

A personal parser would be nice, while I doubt that will also happen, why not do what blade and soul did? Dummy strikes with mechanics of the boss. You have to do all the mechanics and still do the dps to do it.
This would be more realistic tbh. As much as a personal parser would help certain people, the question is, how would they know if they did good or not? Maybe open a PF option where you would see everyones damage as well, consider some people would either lie or not even tell their own numbers if lets say group couldn't do enough dps.

[AxlStream]

After thinking about it, a personal parser won't change a thing. Players willing to improve will use it sure, but without proper metrics to measure yourselves against, hard to see where improvements could be made. To add to that, the players we are mostly complaining about, will probably just never use it and turn it off entirely. It's use will be extremely marginal at best as I assume ACT will be able to do it's job still and will be miles ahead of the in game parser functionality wise.

The only way to actually increase DPS accountability is to make their numbers known to the entire party sadly. If it's personal, nobody but them will ever know.

[RichardButte]

After thinking about it, a personal parser won't change a thing.

It will allow me to know mid-raid encounter when I'm overwhelmed and forgetting a part of my rotation.

That ALONE is a pretty huge and favorable change...

[RiyahArp]

I dont want personal parsers because what will happen is that SE will design content assuming you are using personal parsers; i.e. "oh, we can add more dps checks and make them a lot tougher."