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

[Nedkel]

This is certainly a cyclic argument at this point but just because I feel like it hasn't been stated nearly enough... People who are anti-parser are you okay with people not pulling their own weight in clear/farm parties you're in?

For me personally, its not okay if someone is obviously trolling, but i dont mind now someone doing badly, because i do not like to be called for it either. I have learned that from League of Legends when community outrage is gigantic, i also understand it doesnt matter if am i going to be mad or not, since there is nothing to be mad about at the end of the day its just a game, great part of the gamers community doesnt take it seriously so why should i? My rage will not learn anyone how to play, you will not convince them how to play properly, so why bother.
I am coming from a conclusion, if you want to have fun in the game, you need to be the part of that fun in online game. Raging and calling and kicking will only enforce this behavior further into the community, if i will kick someone for their performance, the one kicked away will do it to the someone else.

@edit
And official, available for everyone parser will just make these things worse. An ability to judge other people performance is what could push a lot of people to go bananas over the game. Just look what it is playing as a tank or a healer and being kicked out for small things, it happen to me few times already, because i was "spinning the mobs/boss" or not waiting for the buff, or the dps died because it have rushed and pulled himself.
This makes me believe for sure, there will be people who will cry around over someone dps being like 20-30% lower. I could see even a healers getting called more often if they focus on keeping a tank alive but dont do any dmg. Since checking it would be super easy, this will happen more frequently.

Some of you talk a big game about it being better to disband a party that isn't clearing than to know who the problem is and remove them if they can't keep up. I feel like that likely isn't what you practice and even if it is why is it okay to invalidate the experience and time of 7 players for the hurt feelings of someone who has gone into content way over their head?

Everyone is quick to pity the poor, underperforming part of the playerbase - how about a little sensitivity to the people who have sunk a lot of time and effort into this game? Why are their feelings and time considered less important?

Because playing badly is for the most part not a thing someone could overcome so easly. What if that one guy has weird IRL circumstances happening around him or when he never played mmorpg before or is he doing the certain duty for the first time, he doesnt control it and doesnt have an ability to just stop playing badly on a dime.
The people raging and being rude could control themselves, and they are being little brats over a game, over a PUG which an experienced player should have know he is not going to get everyone playing good in it. You may be playing with a party finder, well thats not also the best way to get things sorted, its just a different form of PUG with random people looking for a party.

I joined a Susano clear party that had to disband recently. The description clearly asked for people who knew what they were doing to essentially get someone their clear and help farm them some totems to pick up a Susano weapon they wanted for glam. I assumed this meant we would all (this RDM aside) be remotely competent at both our jobs and the fight.

The RDM, despite being new to the fight, actually wasn't even the biggest problem. They dropped lightning on us once but so did several other party members. Even with two competent healers healing our butts off we couldn't clear this incredibly easy fight, we were running dry on MP even with consistant Mana Shifts from our newbie RDM friend.

This PF asked for people to be competent and got incompetent players by and large. If there were a parser perhaps we could have seen the issues and kicked the biggest offenders, instead that RDM had to wait two more nights for their clear and my cohealer and I had our time wasted by idiots that don't read their PF descriptions.

I don't know if anyone's experience actually matters to you guys, it sorta seems like you're trolling at this point, but there are tons of situations like this all the time that would be better resolved with an ingame parser.

1. I understand people getting annoyed when they losed their ranking in the certain team based game (cs go, lol, dota), but i cant understand why over such stupid thing? People on low lvls when they need to beat a certain dungeon in order to proceed into the story has better excuse of being abusive than this, but i find them way more patient and kind then someone apparently rushing for glamour, that makes no sense.
I know the time is precious, but when someone value their own time over the progress they do, they could be called addicted to the game. They dont get anything real anyway, they still waste time for the game, and they should be aware of they dont really are entitled to do the progress all the time and there is a chance of them losing something, like in any other game, sometimes you just lose sometimes you win, you cant win all the time, lol.

2. The game is growing and inviting more newbies also those from the consoles who never played mmorpg before, % of "competent players" will decrease and there is nothing to be surprised about when you could see increased number of people who has problems with each class mechanics. Red mage is not easy class to play as far as i have been told.

Also i would like to know how many runs it takes on the hardest content to lose one, because i cant believe it is more than 50% and everyone having a problem doing it.

[Tridus]

For me personally, its not okay if someone is obviously trolling, but i dont mind now someone doing badly, because i do not like to be called for it either. I have learned that from League of Legends when community outrage is gigantic, i also understand it doesnt matter if am i going to be mad or not, since there is nothing to be mad about at the end of the day its just a game, great part of the gamers community doesnt take it seriously so why should i? My rage will not learn anyone how to play, you will not convince them how to play properly, so why bother.
I am coming from a conclusion, if you want to have fun in the game, you need to be the part of that fun in online game. Raging and calling and kicking will only enforce this behavior further into the community, if i will kick someone for their performance, the one kicked away will do it to the someone else.

It's a team game, at the end of the day. If one person's underperformance is causing seven other people to fail, the best thing to do for the team is kick that person and bring in someone who can play at the same level as the other seven. Is it fair to have everyone else have their time wasted by someone who simply can't play at that level?

Because playing badly is for the most part not a thing someone could overcome so easly. What if that one guy has weird IRL circumstances happening around him or when he never played mmorpg before or is he doing the certain duty for the first time, he doesnt control it and doesnt have an ability to just stop playing badly on a dime.

Someone doing a high end duty for the first time should join a learning party, where that's the expectation. Nothing wrong with that at all. Someone who has never played an MMO before isn't going to be doing Susano Ex, they'll be doing Copperbell Mines, and that one is tuned for learning. Someone who has weird IRL circumstances is unfortunate, but again, why does that mean everyone else has to suffer?

At some point, you have to respect other people's time. I see very little of that in a lot of these posts.

The people raging and being rude could control themselves, and they are being little brats over a game, over a PUG which an experienced player should have know he is not going to get everyone playing good in it. You may be playing with a party finder, well thats not also the best way to get things sorted, its just a different form of PUG with random people looking for a party.

There's no reason to be rude, but if I set up a farm party and you're incapable of farming, I'm kicking you. I can be polite about it, but I'm still kicking you. Some people call that rude elitist toxic behavior all on its own. But there's a bunch of other people also paying subs who joined a farm party, and as the party leader that's what I try and deliver.

1. I understand people getting annoyed when they losed their ranking in the certain team based game (cs go, lol, dota), but i cant understand why over such stupid thing? People on low lvls when they need to beat a certain dungeon in order to proceed into the story has better excuse of being abusive than this, but i find them way more patient and kind then someone apparently rushing for glamour, that makes no sense.

Story content is largely in levelling roulette, especially with newbies. Everyone knows you're getting newbies in levelling roulette. It's fine.

A farm party should be able to farm. That's the point. If someone can't, they shouldn't be there. That's on them for wasting everyone else's time, not on everyone else for being unwilling to have their own play time hijacked so someone can get a carry.

I know the time is precious, but when someone value their own time over the progress they do, they could be called addicted to the game.

This makes no sense whatsoever. Addiction has a specific meaning and diagnosis. Belittling that like this is insulting.

They dont get anything real anyway, they still waste time for the game, and they should be aware of they dont really are entitled to do the progress all the time and there is a chance of them losing something, like in any other game, sometimes you just lose sometimes you win, you cant win all the time, lol.

The entire game is a "waste of time", if you think about it. It's recreation. If people choose to spend their time on it, that's their right in a free society. And yeah, you might lose on some runs. That's how it goes. But if you're losing because someone simply can't play at the level required, you remove them and fix the problem. You don't throw your hands up and go "oh well, I guess it's impossible tonight because forming a party that actually can clear the encounter would be rude".

2. The game is growing and inviting more newbies also those from the consoles who never played mmorpg before, % of "competent players" will decrease and there is nothing to be surprised about when you could see increased number of people who has problems with each class mechanics. Red mage is not easy class to play as far as i have been told.

And as people play longer, the % of competent players goes up. Experience helps you develop skill, after all. But that doesn't happen if we just decide that not knowing how to do anything and being carried through all content is fine. At some point if you want to do high end content, you need to learn how to do it. That process involves learning parties and wipes, but it leaves you a better player when you come out the other end.

(Remember: SE lets you kick people for "playstyle differences".)

[Grimr]

My two cents. I came from Wow about 2 years ago to ff14 and i haven't looked back. FF works because its devs know to address imbalance issue not ignore them like blizzard does on a regular basis. Having said that, putting parser or dps check in game causes more problems than it solves. It will simply lead to a community as toxic as WoW or worse. FF does not need that. I have said this many times Yoshida needs to take little to no influence from WoW. It has had it's time in the sun; no more.

[Jijifli]

My two cents. I came from Wow about 2 years ago to ff14 and i haven't looked back. FF works because its devs know to address imbalance issue not ignore them like blizzard does on a regular basis. Having said that, putting parser or dps check in game causes more problems than it solves. It will simply lead to a community as toxic as WoW or worse. FF does not need that. I have said this many times Yoshida needs to take little to no influence from WoW. It has had it's time in the sun; no more.

I used to play wow, let me tell you, as someone who used recount, I was trash at later levels.

Like, extreme trash. Like if you took my WoW performance instead of FFXIV performance into Lacksmi I'd manage to kill everyone with her bossom somehow, even the people with Vril. I was this prove to messing it all up.

NOBODY cared though, because I stayed out of raids. Nobody gave a care in the dungeon because things still died. The only time I've ever been yelled at is in low level dungeons where some people expect world fists. Nobody cared in heroics though. And based on what I've been seeing for mythic, only Mythic 0 has this toxicity issue.

Also, I LOVE how we're using WoW every time about parsers like it's the only game ever to have anything related to it. All the ACT thing does we use in FF is take the info in your battle log and make it nice and neat. If I truly wanted to, I could go through the battle log and find out your exact dps, crit chance, direct hit chance, what hit you, etc. Why would I go through all that though with how messy it is if a system does it for me in real time? The info is ALREADY in the game.

If you don't believe me, get rid of your battle log. ACT won't work from there.

[MoroMurasaki]

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Rather than pick through here on my phone I have a few specific questions and points I'd appreciate you addressing based on your reply. This is of corse something I'd like answers to from any anti-parser proponent but you specifically.


Why is the time of competent players of so little value to you? In my example the PF I joined was essentially asking for a conpetent team to carry this new RDM through to get their sword. Several competent players joined,myself and my cohealer included. Why is our time and effort okay to waste by people joining a PF they clearly aren't ready for? I've helped many a learning party through Susano and Lakshmi and when it's stated it's a learning party I don't mine new and underperforming players. This was not (supposed to be) a learning party.

If everyone had your mentality of "lol its a game chill it doesnt matter" how would anyone reliably clear anything? You say you don't like to be called out for poor performance - I welcome it when it's based in facts. I look back at things I've run when I can and try to improve. I would rather be kicked from a party I'm holding back than be the cause of 7 othet people not achieving their goal assuming the goals and expectations were clear from the beginning.

You seem to imply towards the end of your post that the RDM amd host of my PF group were somehow unkind or impatient for being frustrated by clearly underskiled players joining their PF which explicitly stated they were requesting experienced players. If you call a cab to take you to work and get in only to have them take off in the wrong direction is it acceptable for them to respond by saying "lol its cool im taking the long way, you'll get there in 40 minutes" when you know it should only take 10? No, because the expectation that you're going straight to work is there. That is a reasonable situation to become frustrated at. This is no different. Why should that RDM have their time wasted?

Also on a semi-related note RDM is so heavily proc-based it's one of tge easiest DPS to perform decently. I don't know how your "RDM is hard" comment relates to any of this discussion frankly but I felt like you should know.

[Vstarstruck]

Rather than pick through here on my phone I have a few specific questions and points I'd appreciate you addressing based on your reply. This is of corse something I'd like answers to from any anti-parser proponent but you specifically.

Since you said this I will chime in. I am not sure if people see me as "anti parser" as I see a lot of people misunderstanding me so it would not shock me if people viewed me that way. I am not exactly anti-parser but more so speaking out on the issues on having a public parser for those that can't see them.

Now the reason I am replying to you is because I think I can give you some insight with your questions. It is not that I think someone's time is more valued then someone else. My main issue is with parsers people's standards in what they expect from people raises too high. A good example is the skip soar meme ( though that has validity as i believe it was not a high bar of skill to hit that when your sacing a tank spot for a dps) But now you enable the "get kicked if you do not meet for 4k dps, you can't join unless ilevel 340" etc.

When someone is doing extremely low bar, wasn't your example of people dying repeatedly? so that is an easy kick right? if someone is doing 2k dps when low bar skill is 3k and most hitting 4k, I think it is easly to tell visually they are lagging behind and thus a parser is not needed anyway.

I think that is the problem putting in dps checks when you are not allowed to have a parser? I think SE has circular reasoning here and should be addressed. This means either 1. REMOVE ALL DPS CHECKS IN CONTENT NOT CURRENT. This means outside the newest extremes, and savage (like say this new branch of savage is for i370 gear or something?) so all "outdated content" should have them removed, if you are going to have the stance of no parsers. 2. Have some kind of self rating system (DPS too low for this content, you shouldn't join a public group for this run yet) would be a start. 3. some kind of in game tutorial gating, like you can't queue expert on your tank if you fail to pass some basic lv 70 tutorial. One of these or a combo of needs to really happen , and prob others I did not list, the skill gap is simply too large.

Another problem with parsers can enable is job exclusion. Oh we do not want SAMs joining our pf anymore 4.2+ because max DPS is too low.

As for the RDM comments, I think it has a reverse learning curve. It is "hard" to learn, but easy to master.