Confessions of a Toxic Elitist

[KaivaC]

Here, let me pull your attention to another post as well:

There's something to this but there's also other factors you may not be considering: How many players are actually posting logs of Sigma Normal? If people are posting FFLogs of a normal version of a raid, what is the likelihood that they're also they ones obsessed with high percentiles and thus you're comparing yourself against the average of 10% of the population which is intrinsically different than the average of 100% of the population? (If your at 9th percentile of the top 90th percentile then you're actually 91st percentile which is WAY above the typical average). Lastly, unless you're running with the same people as always whom are uploading these logs, how certain are you off their ACT settings to accurately portray your performance?

Just more food for thought.

No, I'm definitely stuck in the PUG life. I rarely know in advance if a clear is going to get uploaded or not and these days, I'm wary of asking random players if they are parsing because I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to judge them. I thought that ACT was pretty accurate, but I've not used the program myself because of PS4. The recent ones from normal, however, I do trust, hence my issue with myself.

That's like telling someone they deserve the flu. Your body responds in a way that is unproportional to a situation and is considered an actual illness. It's ok to feel a bit miffed about things, it's ok to take the time to reflect, it means you care, but if you're using "depression" in the way I do when I talk about it, no one deserves it. Least of all over a game.

I...don't really know how to respond. I didn't feel like it was wrong, and we can't exactly deny that I haven't been something of a jerk on the forums. I dunno, maybe I'm just wired a bit oddly, but I didn't necessarily find anything wrong with the post in question. I mean, yeah, it hurt a bit, but it's still something to consider.

Kaiva's the one despairing over what FFLogs has done to them. All the fun they had in game somehow just gets ignored because of numbers on a website. Some person literally told them to be quiet over how they ranked compared to other players. Which is toxic?

Which is fine, because I put myself in this situation in the first place and didn't have the means to back it up when I finally saw how exposed I really was. Yes, my numbers heavily bother me to the point that this thread started. But I put myself in this situation because of what I have posted in the past. 'Gotta walk the walk and talk the talk', is how the saying goes. I'm owning up to my own ignorance and now I'm working on taking that walk.

Pretty sure this is one of the reasons why Yoshi P. doesn't like FFlogs. As for my own experience I've looked myself up out of curiosity but I could care less about any of the logs or numbers themselves other people uploaded. The game is supposed to be fun. If you're not having fun you're doing it wrong. Perhaps take a step back and evaluate if you really want to be slaving over some logs if they make you miserable?

This is hard to answer because, like I stated above, I sort of put myself in this situation. In a sense, I kinda want to be better than 9th percentile. And I know there are probably even more players who ran into this same situation, so I just want to see what their experiences were like when they got hit with how their own performance matched up.

[Vidu]

DPS is one of your main responsibilities. It is equally as vital as holding threat, positioning mobs, and using your defensive utility. Using cooldowns is nothing more than a single binary button press at a specific time and requires exceptionally little thought. Threat is trivially passive, unless you're optimizing DPS and as far as positioning goes, it's largely irrelevant in current encounter design, save for some savage fights, which your logs do not indicate you participate in.

I wrote that before hading out to work, so maybe I didnt made that clear enough: I am totally aware that DPS is one of my main responsibilities and I'm trying to push that as much as I can. The reason my logs dont indicate that I'm participating in Savage fights is because my group isnt uploading them, since we dont care about that as long as we clear our content, we're happy. We - or at least I - have no desire to share my numbers with anyone. Not because they're bad just because I wouldnt want to go through the hassle of uploading stuff etc.
No worries, I know how to do my job, I do it well - even if you cant see that by checking numbers on a website

[RiyahArp]

Which is fine, because I put myself in this situation in the first place and didn't have the means to back it up when I finally saw how exposed I really was. Yes, my numbers heavily bother me to the point that this thread started. But I put myself in this situation because of what I have posted in the past. 'Gotta walk the walk and talk the talk', is how the saying goes. I'm owning up to my own ignorance and now I'm working on taking that walk.

No, it's not fine. Its not fine for that to happen. It's not fine for people to tell others to shut up despite actually clearing and doing their best on the hardest content of the game. It's not fine to get depressed over something because you feel like you need to be professional just to even have a seat at the table.

Elitism brings the worst part of the real world into games, where it shouldn't belong. Chasing status, despair at your position compared to others, viewing leisure as work, and often deadly serious work at that; its not healthy.

[Tridus]

Kaiva's the one despairing over what FFLogs has done to them. All the fun they had in game somehow just gets ignored because of numbers on a website.

Kaiva *asked* for her DPS. No one called her out. No one pointed it out. No one even mentioned it until she asked what it was, and she wasn't happy with the numbers that were provided. She said so in the post immediately above yours.

My peers have been pretty supportive - in fact, it wasn't really an issue with them because I'm not playing horribly. But looking at my logs (I'm on PS4, so I can't parse myself, otherwise, I'd have more than what's uploaded), I can tell I'm not pulling my weight. I haven't had anybody really call me out on my DPS, but the thing with me is that I've come to hold myself to a high standard. I don't look to other party members to push their DPS, because in Savage raiding, since I don't have a static, the only thing I really care as far as the party goes is that we all get the clear as smoothly as possible. As far as DPS goes when I'm playing SMN, I care that I'm only pulling my weight DPS-wise, which I have not been.

I wouldn't say it's so much as that I'm not enjoying it, but rather, I have a lot of pride. Now, to be fair, I have no idea what kind of numbers I've been pulling lately because none of my logs have been posted since March 7th. But the DPS numbers are similar in the normal Sigmascape fights that have been uploaded recently. So it kinda screws with me that I've been wanting a stronger player base when I myself have been playing far below what is considered average. A poster above you said that this bout of depression was deserved, and perhaps that might be true. I admit that I was completely in the wrong.

But I don't personally judge others parses...never have. Not saying anybody here said that I was, just providing extra clarification.

Some people are competitive and want to improve. I'm not sure where you get the authority to dictate how they should or should not play the game when you weren't even in the group and aren't involved at all.

Some person literally told them to be quiet over how they ranked compared to other players.

Who was that, exactly? Go ahead, I'll wait.

Which is toxic?

Well, one person posts about an experience where they weren't happy with their own performance. A bunch of people post supportive things. You then show up and call people morons. So remind me again, where is the toxic behavior here, aside from you calling people morons.

[RiyahArp]

Kaiva *asked* for her DPS. No one called her out. No one pointed it out. No one even mentioned it until she asked what it was, and she wasn't happy with the numbers that were provided. She said so in the post immediately above yours.

Someone obliquely hinted that Kaiva shouldn't be talking about improving the playerbase in one of the threads they posted here. I forget which one, but I think that's what provoked this crisis, and its all because anyone can go and look up their data which they often have no control over when they post or what they do. For all we know, their logs could have been from learning parties.

Well, one person posts about an experience where they weren't happy with their own performance. A bunch of people post supportive things. You then show up and call people morons. So remind me again, where is the toxic behavior here, aside from you calling people morons.

Supporting doesn't change anything. You don't support a broken system, and more people need to call out how stupid fflogs is in general, because it causes things like this a lot more than you'd think. Tired of people making excuses for the piece of junk that it is; it's tailor made to set people against each other by ranking them.

[Estelle9lives]

I love how some people are so quick to label FFlogs/Parsing "toxic" and "elitist" when those are legitimate tools that can be used as a great metric for personal improvement. It's like people can't take a second to look in the mirror before throwing out these labels, the epitome being someone saying a person deserves to be depressed. Really?

On topic, Kaiva, this happened with me when I started paying this game a little over 3 years ago, I started as a WAR, thought I was on a roll since dungeons were so easy and Ramuh Ex made me realize I absolutely sucked as a tank. I simply could not keep track of all the debuffs, swaps and mechanics I had to do, this is not even accounting I had no idea about DPS numbers back then. I believe I improved a lot over the last few years, and have been enjoying raiding ever since FCoB.

Regarding the numbers... Your logs aren't good, but they are also from a small sample pool (1 log for each fight) and like others have said, remember that when it comes to Savage it will compare you against people who are most likely raiders as well. I took the liberty of looking up your gear on the lodestone and I have noticed that you have a lot of slots that aren't melded, and several of your pieces are sub-optimal for SMN (Spell Speed for SMN = bad), both factors which have a heavy impact on your DPS. Outside from that you'd need to take a look on improving your active time (very low on that o5s kill) and your overall opener/rotation.

Other factors to consider are:
1 - You picked one of the most complex DPS classes to learn
2 - You haven't been playing SMN for long
3 - SMN may just not be for you, it happens (happened to me as well, I'm stil a mediocre WAR after all these years lmao)

So yeah, the veeeery first thing you need to do is make sure your gear is at the very least fully melded with materia VI. You can't have a baseline of where you're at with your current gear. Next thing that would be good is either looking up stuff about SMN online/on the DPS forums/on the Balance Discord, or finding someone who is good at SMN to coach you. We are on the same server, so feel free to add me if you ever need advice/help on current savage fights (I have cleared the tier) or advice regarding healer jobs (my main area). I also play stuff like DRG/PLD at an acceptable level.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

FFlogs is for morons. It's people who are bored with the game trying to make it artificially harder for themselves by having an informal ranking contest. It doesn't matter what percentile you are in so long as you are enjoying the game and reach the content that is fun for your level of skill. Whenever you focus on how you do compared to others, you open the door to unhappiness because there will always be so many players above you that you can't compete with. Some dude will always parse above you, playing the game on a guitar hero controller or something.

This is kind of why some people are against parser culture. It's one thing if you willingly find fun in obsessively practicing to make your play flawless, but so much of this is just forced competition for other players or people needing to conform to a community standard that often devalues real achievement.

A site which offers comprehensive and thorough analyse of every single aspect in a given encounter is for morons because some people misuse it? It boggles the mind how little self-awareness you have. No one said anything antagonistic yet here you come ready to start another parse debate and label anyone who happens to like them as morons. Jeez, I wonder who the toxic person is in this thread.

In fact, are you not forcing your opinions onto others? After all, what criteria do you have to dictate how people enjoy the game? We get it, you hate parsers. That is your opinion, not the general consensus. Shock horror, many people find improving themselves entertaining. FFlogs allows you to do just that.

[Bernkastelx]

This is what I call overreacting. Taking a look at your gear you have a lot of spots left open to meld. You have a 70 tank get those free cracked clusters in lvling roulette and meld that gear. That is a dps increase right there. People seem to forget the percentile gets harder to reach the 90% when people are getting better gear which im sure by now more than a couple of people have 375 weapons and bis gear. Unless you are geared as the same with these people your overall dmg is not going to compare. Which is the real reason yoshi p doesn't want to add a parser is because people don't know how to read data and take factors into consideration and only think a number means something. Personally after looking at your gear and the fight that is pretty much a target dummy your dmg could be improved on by simply straightening your rotation out and fully melding your gear. Your dmg isn't as low as you think it is.

[RiyahArp]

One criteria is healthy and doesn't lead to a rat race of people endlessly comparing themselves to other people over numbers in a game. If you beat the content, you beat it. Congratulations! If you don't you try harder. You don't need to compare yourself to others, because there will always be someone better than you, and when people compare, they don't do it to improve, they do it to play crappy status games over each other. This is one of the worst aspects of modern gaming, especially in MMOs. And people who keep automating processes like this are stupid; the devs never designed this content to require parsers and act triggers and discord. They didn't design pve to reward people by individual dps, or we'd have letter rankings and a leaderboard ingame like we do for frontlines and feast.

The logs changes the focus of pve to a lot more competitive than it should be. You don't need to know what others do except as a raw number to evaluate yourself. We don't need to know what percentile Kaiva is in; we just need all the data averaged and you put on an individual point on a graph. I don't need to search her out to see her numbers, especially since fflogs creator made it opt out (and the stupid community thinks opting out means you must be a bad player, rather than not liking how I don't consent to my data being put on that site.) I just need to know that i do 3800, and average is 4500 or something. I don't need to have a public profile of my performance as a business card or something/

[Dualgunner]

the devs never designed this content to require parsers and act triggers and discord.

I'm also assuming you believe that the game wasn't designed with endgame rotations in mind, since all of them are found off-site through individual research and not in-game.