Confessions of a Toxic Elitist

[KisaiTenshi]

You forgot to mention that people who think they play good,...

Aww, you felt left out. I was thinking of a way to say "Person who keeps digging up the dead chocobos from 2.0 content, or really ANY old content, to say someone is bad at the game." If you forget the context of that conversation it was because it was in one of those many "pure healer, vs idiot dps healer" arguments. Which was the point of "h) Instead of taking advice, looks at players lodestone to try and find a reason to dismiss their advice or opinion" Which is what you just did now, congrats toxic player, here's your award: nothing! you get zero internet points!

Only to those who don't know how privacy laws work. ACT simply calculates information already publicly available by reading the battle logs. This being uploaded is no different than if I were to copy/paste logs from the chat itself. There is not privacy breach because they weren't private to begin with.

From a legal perspective, Square-Enix owns all of the data, so people using the parser have no legal right to send the data anywhere else.

http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...2&tag=users_en

2.3 Commercial Use. You may not exploit the Game for any commercial purpose (for example, advertising any product or service in-game, or use by the operator of a cyber café) without Square Enix's prior written consent.
...
2.5 Data Mining. You may not intercept, mine or otherwise collect information from the Game using unauthorized third party software.

7. PRIVACY AND USE OF INFORMATION
By playing the Game, you agree to Square Enix's Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into this User Agreement by reference. The Privacy Policy governs how Square Enix will use and share your information, except as modified herein. You agree that Square Enix may use the information you provide (such as IP address, e-mail address, or home address) in order to identify you and contact you to deliver notices, and may send you product-related marketing information. You acknowledge that Square Enix will be monitoring your use of the Game to help you play the Game, for our internal analysis to help us improve our games and services, to investigate disruptive activities or Prohibited Activities, and to confirm that you are abiding by the terms of this User Agreement and related agreements. In order to protect Square Enix's staff and customers, Square Enix may cooperate with federal, state and local law enforcement with or without the receipt of a formal subpoena or search warrant. You acknowledge and consent that Square Enix may provide your electronic communications and data, including e-mails and chat logs, to such government authorities, without any liability to you or any third party. You hereby provide your consent to such actions.

And there's the "you automatically lose" arbitration clause.

Also that Data Mining point is worded so broadly that it would include all the site wiki's and youtube/twitch videos.

At any rate, people who are "using" parsers, third party tools, hacking tools, etc to be better than people who do not have and do not want these tools, (or can't use them like PS4 users) is cheating in a loose sense. Which is why YoshiP/SquareEnix has generally not cracked down on such sites, because they would be gone in one easy DMCA request. Perhaps SE sees value in not being anti-consumer and crushing every bit of unauthorized infringement...

https://support.na.square-enix.com/r...5382&tag=authc

You may not use the Materials for any sales or commercial use, meaning you cannot receive license fees or advertising revenue, except as part of the partner programs operated by YouTube.com, Twitch.tv, Ustream.tv, or similar programs. If the operator of a partner program seeks to confirm our policy, please point them to this page as we do not have the resources to respond to all requests.
If you use a trademark (such as "Final Fantasy" or any related logo), then you must include a notice saying that the mark is owned by Square Enix, such as the following:
FINAL FANTASY is a registered trademark of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.
If you use any copyrighted Materials (such as screenshots or gameplay video), then you must include the following notice:
FINAL FANTASY XIV © 2010 - 2018 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.

That fflogs sites has ads on it, so it violates the materials use license, it also has a pateron link, so someone that is not SE is making money from this data mining.
ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com has ads on it, it violates the materials use license, it also has a patreon link, so someone else is making money from this data mining.
The FFXIV Wikia also has ads on it, thus it violates the materials use license too.

The thing people always fail to understand when it comes to legal use of materials is that "fair use" is a defense against copyright infringement. It is not a given. The only reason anything isn't taken down days after it goes up is because it stays under the radar, and doesn't appear to be portraying the game in a negative light. With that said, these sites all give players information that they would have to spend a lot of time figuring out themselves. SE can focus their anti-RMT efforts on the botters who are are larger threat.

I've been in SSS since my last post, so I'm slowly catching up on all the posts thus far, but I have a moment to respond to this one. 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.

Nah, nobody deserves to be depressed. Some people just get their schadenfreude by seeing people get hurt. If you want a stronger player base, the way to get there is by helping, not demanding, that players improve. That may or may not be the mentor system.

What chases good players away from games is when they feel bored, or something better comes out (let's be real, FFXIV is peak subscription MMO, everything else is has shifted to "publisher-in-your-wallet" lootbox gambling P2W.) I'd rather pay money for FFXIV and Netflix than be progress blocked in a game by not spending enough money on gachapon and praying to RNGesus that I get something that isn't vendor trash.

What attracts good players to games (not necessarily back to games) is a healthy supportive player base, not one that is driven by end-goals. If a total stranger joins your static, and they have none of the EXTREME content completed, are you willing to show them how to do it? Or are you going to tell them to watch a video and don't join until they have mastered it already by somehow only studying a video?

Like the thing I hope that happens is that the "duty recorder" , we eventually have a way to record the extreme primals/raids, and can somehow let other players play it back. That makes it more "sports"-like in that you can review and study where you made your own mistakes, rather then relying unreliable unauthorized tools, or telling people to watch it on youtube.

[RiyahArp]

When I disagreed with your ideas on casual gameplay being harder Kaiva, I did it because I don't think they work. I don't think simply because you only score 90% on a third party list somewhere you shouldn't be listened too, and if you manage to get up to 50% you suddenly do. If you want to get better, do it for yourself; whether you have an opinion on something has nothing to do with how much you parse or rank. Your ideas were liked or disliked on their own merits, not your own parses.

[Tridus]

Tridus, when Kaiva posted in a thread a while back, someone said "people shouldn't talk about improving the playerbase when they are part of the problem." This was a few days ago. I don't think Kaiva posted any logs assuming that any random can criticize them and use them to discount any points she makes here on the forum because she doesn't parse enough for their standards. The points they made were about casual content, not asking for harder savage, to the point where her solution probably was weaker than you would think. I'm assuming this is what spurred the thing, because the focus of that thread was on ideas how to improve the general playerbase, and they were pointing at her for trying to suggest that when she was, well bad. (which is bull) This is what I mean. I'm not saying she is bad for asking for parses, but its bad to criticize someone's reasonable suggestions based on the parse they had.

Yeah I think she mentioned some of that in the OP. Also depression. So it's something of a shock to also find out that she wasn't doing as well as she thought she was.

I mean, there can be an upside to that in the long run. If she has a different perspective now because of it, that can be a good thing when dealing with other players. She also got a lot of support for if she wants to try and improve those numbers, which is also good. Obviously the initial shock and disappointment is rough, but she's got in game friends to help with that.

But yes, what spurred this was that she asked for numbers and was surprised by what she heard, so she asked for the logs. That likely led to thinking about how she'd handled other things in the past and the "toxic elitist" label that gets thrown around here sometimes. Bit of self-reflection never hurt anyone in the long run, and I'm pretty happy to still run stuff with her no matter what her numbers are, so I think it'll work out in the end.

As for FFlogs, idk. No one here would think someone scraping /say chat and posting it in a searchable database is kosher, but its as public in game as battle logs. I don't think legality is an issue, but it would be nice if data was opt in instead of opt out, and players didn't assume no parses=bad player.

I suppose the difference is that searchable /say wouldn't serve much use except to find amusing or embarassing quotes, whereas people can use combat log data for performance improvement. I mean, parsers were visible in streams of the teams working on ultimate that had public streams. It's a useful tool for that purpose, which is likely why SE ignores people using it so long as they don't bash people over the head with it in game. Opt out vs opt in is one of those eternal debates between privacy and usability that could probably take up 30 pages of its own. Clearly, FFLogs doesn't have an incentive to hide everything by default, although it might be a nice gesture to the playerbase if they did.

Which leads to this weird dynamic where it's bannable to kick someone and tell them they have low DPS, but perfectly okay to kick someone and give no explanation whatsoever. I don't tend to think either of these is very healthy. (I've also never looked someone up when forming a party, but since I don't do savage it's not really an issue. I just like killing stuff faster and want to do my part to make that happen.)

[Tridus]

I am trying to give you concrete examples of how idiotic the reasons for OP depressing are - and as I was saying you seem to miss the point, or voluntarily miss the point I'm trying to prove behind those examples, and start being sarcastic.

You do know that depression is a serious, diagnosed medical condition, right? Because it doesn't sound like you know that, and does sound like you're attacking someone for having said medical condition. Coming from the person who said this, that's remarkable.

You are the living proof of the toxicity I am talking about.

You seem to need a mirror.

Sorry, but at this point, I'm not interested in debating this anymore.

Halleujah.

[ToasterMan]

Hey don't feel bad. You're just realizing how difficult this game actually is. I'm not ashamed to admit it, this is the hardest game to do well in that I've ever played. Sometimes I wonder if it is too hard for me and that I should go play something else. Maybe just stick to single player and PVP games.

And if you got depression like I do, maybe you should get it treated?

[akaneakki]

Aww, you felt left out.

I don't see anything about dps from healer in my post. I mention a healer not using the best healing gcd in the game even near end of HW. But please go check my post again where I mention healing dps, like I said you miss the true meaning of elitist. ''Make people cut cutsceene'' doesn't make you elitist. Telling people how to play a class but they aren't even 50% at, is ignorart and elitist. Many of those things you mention are far from elitist vs being a a-hole or just very unpopular things to do/say.
But yeah I'm waiting where you pinpoint that I mentioned healer dps in my post. And why would I look at your lodestone? I have no interest in doing that, again making up things.

[Fynlar]

3. The forums skew towards the high end and their definition of "easy" is wildly out of whack with the playerbase as a whole. If you're not actually in the elite level of player, you may very well find stuff hard that the forum consensus doesn't. That's okay.

This is a big one.

I ran into a similar sort of thing in FFXI, back when I was struggling to get through CoP. The first static group that I was in and painstakingly put together eventually crumbled at Ouryu; we were just not having a good time trying to get through that fight. Yet most people who went through CoP when it was current seemed to find it to be one of the easier fights.

Many months down the road, after finally assembling another group to get through the rest (with some members of the group being the same, like myself, and others being different), we got to the infamous "airship" fight with Omega and Ultima, and based on many accounts, we expected to have a hard time. It was actually much simpler than Ouryu for us.

Many of the accounts of oldschoolers going through CoP seemed to have That One Boss that they had a more difficult time with than the others. This is a pretty normal thing.

[zuzu-bq]

You can spot good and bad players without a parse if you pay attention to what is happening. People oftenly forget this small fact.

Knowing what your team is doing is also a trait present on good players in general. It's not toxic, it actually improves your gameplay. What you do with the information is up to you.

[akaneakki]

You can spot good and bad players without a parse if you pay attention to what is happening. People oftenly forget this small fact.

Sometimes this is true, sometimes its not. What do you classify as good player without a parser?

[SenorPatty]

Sometimes this is true, sometimes its not. What do you classify as good player without a parser?

Anyone using all of their toolkit is a good player at eye's glance. It's the above-average/optimal players that you can't see without a parser