Survey: Community Opinions Regarding Parsing/Parsers in Final Fantasy XIV

[RichardButte]

How do you plan on accounting for bias and determining an accurate sample? Forums in general aren't representative of a playerbase as a whole for most games and I suspect your question will lead to a polarized sample instead of a representative one; IE, those that have strong feelings will be more likely to participate than those in the middle.

Not only that, but I've seen so many fervent anti-parsers here who are convinced that parsing in ANY form (even personal) being added to XIV will automatically unsub them from XIV and instead sub them to WoW.

I'm sure these people are clicking on the "Pro Parser" survey and clicking every response that sounds like "I want parsing because I want to be a gigantic flaming jerk to everyone".

[Tridus]

Not only that, but I've seen so many fervent anti-parsers here who are convinced that parsing in ANY form (even personal) being added to XIV will automatically unsub them from XIV and instead sub them to WoW.

Boy are they in for a surprise in WoW! Reminds me of Republicans who were like "if gay marraige goes through I'm moving to Canada!"

Umm, about that...

[Guulu]

Cool thing. But I feel the result might be polarizing because people have bias and potentially lying. Still would be interesting to see how it goes though.

[Vespar]

Im totally against parsing of any kind. I hate being judged and personally games like this should be a fun experience with friends. They shouldnt become an avenue for harrasment or judgement or competition (excluding PvP as its designed to be competetive).
I quit the raiding scene when folks in my raid group suddenly became obsessed with parsing and their attitudes shifted to very competitive and they began role-restricting what jobs we should have to play. I just want to have fun and do my best on the job(s) I like to play. I just want to enjoy my time in XIV, and since I quit raiding Ive been able to do that peacefully. This game would only become more toxic with parsing and people would just stop including players who didnt quite make the bill. (Even if they are actually very good people.)

[RichardButte]

Boy are they in for a surprise in WoW! Reminds me of Republicans who were like "if gay marraige goes through I'm moving to Canada!"

Umm, about that...

I've raided in both games and I honestly don't find WoW's community to be any worse than XIV's unless you're talking about some bad LFRs in WoW.

WoW's forum community is also sadly better than XIV's. If you make a QoL suggestion (like "It would be nice if ______ worked better") on WoW's forums, people are typically like, "Yeah, that'd be nice to have."

In XIV's forums, making a QoL suggestion often gets you a bunch of responses explaining how you can "work around" the issue, as though they're the ones who will need to implement this QoL change or something...

Im totally against parsing of any kind. I hate being judged and personally games like this should be a fun experience with friends. They shouldnt become an avenue for harrasment or judgement or competition (excluding PvP as its designed to be competetive).
I quit the raiding scene when folks in my raid group suddenly became obsessed with parsing and their attitudes shifted to very competitive and they began role-restricting what jobs we should have to play. I just want to have fun and do my best on the job(s) I like to play. I just want to enjoy my time in XIV, and since I quit raiding Ive been able to do that peacefully. This game would only become more toxic with parsing and people would just stop including players who didnt quite make the bill. (Even if they are actually very good people.)

Sorry to burst your bubble, but people in a raid NEED to be obsessed with DPS because raid encounters have a lot of DPS checks where, unless the raid can do a certain amount of damage in a set period of time, you wipe.

I realize you want to have fun in XIV, but so do the people who raid and nothing is less fun than wiping repeatedly because of underperforming DPS.

If you want to blame someone, blame SE for adding DPS checks to raid encounters. There is literally no one else at fault...

[Vespar]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but people in a raid NEED to be obsessed with DPS.

Dont misunderstand my words (or twist them to fit your own view). I didnt say I wasnt obsessed with my DPS or quality of play. I spent lots of time practicing on dummies and perfecting my jobs rotations. HOWEVER, I actually perform worse when I know Im being parsed because I panic and that causes me to actually miss things or mess up my rotations. I know Im not the only one who does either. Call it peer pressure situation. But really a parser is not needed to do effective DPS. We've shown that time and again already as people keep trucking through raid content as it is. Through trial and error, and learning to operate as a group my old raid group and I took down every raid we went to and I had fun wiping and learning and trying. It made me feel more accomplished when we won. But when parsing became a thing and they started to get obsessed with every little thing, thats when it wasnt fun anymore.

[Kisagami]

I’ve only experiences harassment when it comes to parsers; even someone I consider a friend had to be told not to call other people scrubs, etc. over it even in a joking manner because so many people were upset about it. Also, you can’t trust this survey as there is no way to prevent people from taking the survey as many times as they want, and also it omits the millions of players across this game in other languages.

Square Enix has a reason why parsers aren’t included in this game. Mainly the amount of harassment that comes from them and the hostilities stemming from the debate over them.

[Paladinleeds]

snip

You've had a bad experience. But, I'm indifferent to parsing for the most part. Would I like to see one added? Sure, can help me improve (rather not risk it with ACT etc though, 3rd party parsers that could get you banned if SE ever decide to change their "Don't Ask Don't Tell" approach, and apply it retroactively) as a DPS. Could also help try different things. But a personal PPS (Potency Per Second) parser could be good for that. I think over time though, if parsing became the norm, you'd find a way to get around that fear (when the situation is forced one way, it's surprising just how resourceful humans can be), and you would learn to overcome that panic. I can understand why you're vehemently against parsing, but at the same time I think it is possible.

Then again, it also depends on how your static approached it. Were they jerks about it? Were they rude, condescending, etc? Or were they willing to try and accommodate and help bring up the weaker links? Their attitude towards it will have mattered. Sounds to me like they were the idiot types of "Herp derp your DPS is bad you don't belong here herp derp", instead of the "OK, so your DPS is low, consider trying this this and this, and see if it helps. We can help train you up and get you up and running". I don't use a parser but I take the latter approach (like a friend who was struggling with BLM, I gave her a basic foundation for the job, so she's at least getting the basics mostly right, and then allow her to build it up from there).

[Squintina]

Did the survey. Not a raider (yet). Just a dungeon/trial/hunt healer who want to improve.

Personally I haven't seen parser-related harassment in this game. (Seen it in other games, seen non-parser-related harassment in this game). I don't doubt that it exists, I just don't think it outweighs the pros of at the very least a personal parser, and I think the kind of people who are jerks with parsing would be jerks without it anyway.

Overall I'm pro-parser.

[RichardButte]

But when parsing became a thing and they started to get obsessed with every little thing, thats when it wasnt fun anymore.

I understand and I'm not trying to say you're wrong or anything, but this is sadly what raiding in XIV (and pretty much every gear-gate MMO) is.

It's all a game of numbers: deal X damage within Y seconds while mitigating/healing Z damage, or you wipe. It's up to the individual group about how ambitious they want to be on that front, and I gave up raiding because I didn't want a second job.

But again, blame SE because they've created the environment in which it's more rewarding if players "encourage" each other to improve.