In competition with myself: a request for PERSONAL parsers

[Krotoan]

Personal IRL example - my old boss was brilliant. The sheer complexity and number of IT issues this man solved was beyond reproach. That said, he was a TERRIBLE people manager. He simply never had time for any of his direct reports. Everything I learned was from simply watching and collaborating together and it's been a tremendous boon to my personal career.

Had I ignored his teachings, advice, or methods because I didn't like the way he spoke (and I didn't), or the way he managed the team I would be a significantly less skilled professional today because of it.

The point of this example is that I hope to demonstrate to you that even if you don't like the approach/statement, disregarding it based on feelings is ONLY hurting yourself. It's an incredibly close-minded viewpoint and directly contradicts your statement of taking criticism well. Please do not take offense, try to look at my statement logically and see where I am coming from. I am only trying to help.

point taken, and from a purely logical point of view that makes sense. But aside from the fact that hey, that's real life and your JOB (this is what I do for fun man.. ) I'm also not going to even acknowledge someone who thinks that "LOL U SUCK" is how you criticize or even talk to someone. Do you honestly think that someone who presents their initial foray into gaming advice with a childish insult and a LOL is someone I want to engage for more information? Sure by extrapolation if you get "lol u suck" from EVERYONE you play with there's something wrong and I'll look into it myself. But I can count on one tongue the amount of times that that comment has followed with a useful bit of information about my playstyle or rotation. I take criticism well, but I don't tolerate idiots and neither should anyone else. Maybe if enough people stopped and said "how about you offer some useful advice instead of insulting me" the LOL crowd (no not league but those are some toxic people as well) might rethink how they talk to people. Learning to do your job better is one thing, harping on someone to play a game "optimally" is another.

Do you know how a parser works and the types of information it tallies/tracks and what types of things you can glean from it with a quick glance (and a more in-depth view?)

The reason I wanted to respond to this comment was because I've seen this several times in the FF14 community anti-parser crowd where they bash them, without even knowing the breadth and significance of the data it gives. How can someone be against something they don't even know what it is/does? I wasn't sure if you were speaking speculatively (i.e. what FF14 official parser would have) or about the existing 3rd party tool.

That'd be like me saying the Australian Gov't sucks. I have no idea how they operate or what processes they use, i'd be a fool for taking a stance on it without understanding it first.

I don't use the current parser no. As far as I know there is ACT which I've not really looked into at all and FFlogs which I've checked the.. I think ONE log that someone has parsed with me on the run. I'm going from what I know of older DPS meters and log parsers from wow. They tracked all the information I mentioned. I'm assuming here that an official parser would have access to this info and would display it in realtime if requested. Yes this is a hypothetical addon, but if they're going to actually devote resources to this, why wouldn't it have this information? If you think I'm bashing parsers you have misunderstood me though. Parsers are a tool like anything else, the people who use them need regulation and restriction AND protection. Are you against someone being able to turn it off? Why? Someone who doesn't want that called out has something to hide sure, but as you've said, contributing members of a raid or static will never refuse and if you refuse then that's a pretty good sign you don't want to take that person. The person who's "shitty" saves face and everyone else gets their self improvement tool. Win win. Forcing people to open themselves up to criticism while they're trying to enjoy something isn't fun.