Confessions of a Toxic Elitist

[KisaiTenshi]

That wouldn't break the parser. The parser just reports what the server tells the client is happening. Nothing more. The only way to "break the parser" like that is to have the server LIE to the client about what's happening, which would have the rather unfortunate side effect of having what the player sees and what's happening be different.

Not necessarily. The game client can be told "hit for 0.xxx%" using relative numbers, and that provides a much less useful metric to parsing. People want to see big numbers pop. Get rid of all the numbers, and people will cry about it.

That would make any kind of high level play impossible because the game would effectively be randomized. Push buttons, stuff might happen. Who knows what? That's not how real games work.

No, that's just how crappy thoughtless games work. What makes this game fun is that the battle choreography tends to happen at a pace you can't just load into a macro and "press x to win", but at the same time, it does change strategies when HP reaches certain points.

No, they work because certain skills always do certain things under set conditions. That means there's an optimal rotation. Parsers help you find it and see how effective you are. That's it.

Thus making people go "BiS gear, One true Rotation, git gud" , if this information was unable to be discovered with an unauthorized tool, people would, *shock* have to do trial and error. Hence usage of the tool is cheating.

You don't need a parser to do that if you can record the fight and learn the moves. Better ban Twitch, Youtube, every PC, and the "Share" button on the PS4!

Oh don't be ridiculous, Square Enix has said that you can record the video subject to the Materials use license. Plus they now have the Duty Recorder, which to me seems like a better idea.

People who like a challenge would welcome that. The lower end of the playerbase would quickly get unhappy if they learned a fight and then suddenly the fight changed, though. I don't think it'd have the effect you think it would.

They can tell when people use something on the server end. Going from there to making dynamic adaptive fights that aren't wildly imbalanced or effectively just random stuff happening is quite a leap on a technical level.

If I was developing the game, I would be tempted to make the fights change by doing 50%/35%/15%. 50% of the "underperforming" players get the regular duty, as it was designed. 35% of the players that are "better than most" but not the top, get an adaptive version of the same content that activates when any of the players are in a duty, and the top 15% of the players get a version of the content that adapts specifically to their strategy.

So an Adaptive version of the content, would change the order and speed of the dungeon encounters, but otherwise the strategies remain mostly the same (otherwise it may lead to exploits.) The "vendetta" version would identify what strategy the player uses, and explicitly break it by reacting to those rotations rather than then their own choreography schedule. Tank switches out of tank stance, tank buster, healer dps, tank buster, healer overhealing, spawn more adds, adds defeated too quickly, spawn twice as many. etc.

Uh... what? As per usual, you speak of things you have precisely zero understanding of.

Nah, I know how all the unauthorized software crap works because that is my pet peeve with MMO's. People using cheating tools, people botting, and people being assholes to others by using those tools. With this game it's parsers, with Mabinogi it was game mods that showed the combat power (a hidden number), and that mod lead to all kinds of cheats being introduced. Cheaters like to brag about having an advantage over others, thus they are easily caught out.