On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm sure I'll get a headdesk worthy response to this but I'm genuinely curious of the train of thought. How is knowing your own dps numbers cheating?

Do you look up a walkthrough to a game without even playing it?

Here's almost everything you can do with the parser right now:
1. See every player and NPC/Monster in the zone, their hp, mp, tp, x/y/z location name and FC, immediately.
2. See every buff, debuff, time remaining of that buff/debuff and who casted it
3. See every mining node, before it appears
4. See the hate values for every monster
5. See the equipped gear of every player in the zone

The overlay is what actually puts that on the players screen. Which information you want to know and which information you ignore is what makes the difference between cheating and just logging progress.

Having any information on the screen that is not already presented by the game client is cheating. Knowing that a monster has a million hitpoints vs knowing it has 65% remaining HP isn't terribly different, but because that is a real value sent by the game server to the client, calculating real time DPS is possible, but also highly inaccurate. The reason is that DoT's, HoT's and Pets values are simply not attributed to the player, and buffs and debuffs are clipped over a certain number so the server doesn't report all the buffs. Hence the parser guesses what damage is being done based on the length of time the DoT would last from initial cast. Consider the logic gymnastics that has to be written to take into account a pet, a DoT, an AST Buff that is then subsequently overwritten by another AST's buff, and the crit value. The parser doesn't know any of this because that's not what the game client tracks. The game client doesn't care that a boss has 96 debuffs on it, it only cares what the last 30 are because it only displays that many.

Those "DPS meters" only reflect the DPS you can do in raw damage. If you play a class that deals in DoT's, what you're seeing is guesswork. SMN/SCH/ACN's pets, MCH's turrets, and AST's Earthly Star all involve additional NPC's to track, and hence it's entirely possible for these things to "miss", while the calculation is based on delivering damage.

Relying on the DPS meter to tell you numbers is just deceving yourself, and hence people using parsers to harass other people because they don't do the kind of damage they expect is entirely missing the point that the parser doesn't tell you 100% exactly what damage you're doing at all. Clipping DoT's ensures the parser won't track it properly. You can read the release notes or poke the source code for how that plugin works and see that is all true.

And as I've stated before, the problem is not the people using these things privately. The problem is the script kiddies who get these tools because their FC, or linkshell or some bozo they friended told them about it, and haven't the first clue about how these things work and why it's a bad idea to take them at face value. Anyone tell you "git good" because of fflogs is someone who hasn't the first clue how these thing work. To them, if you don't have anything on fflogs, clearly you must be a bad player. I'd say the opposite is true. If you have anything on fflogs that is publicly visible, go hide it and don't hand out that information to anyone. If a condition of joining a static or a FC is using a parser, and having parses on fflogs, then that is not people you should be dealing with, because it doesn't stop with parsers for a DPS meter.

Hence 'cactbot' is basically radar and fight reduction to "press x to win", you don't need to think, you just need to react.

See the lack of action by SE on parser users usually leads to the lack of action on people are actively botting, because they don't see SE doing anything about it, so they keep testing SE to see what gets them banned. Which appears to be nothing.

I report somewhere between 30 and 90 bot players a day on my server alone. All I have to do is sit there in front of any of the GC areas and punch search to get a list of bot names. These things should not be making it to level 50, yet they do, and they persist for days.

Yet somehow in that time, the GM found time to send a mentor player to the jail for saying some bad words. Meanwhile, bots all still there.

SE's priorities are really backwards. Instead of trying to protect the integrity of the game, they instead appear to be cherry-picking things that have minimal consequence to the game over those that are actively eroding player confidence.

If only players using cheat tools play hard content, then what is the point of developing any hard content at all? Just make everything a choreographed fight like Bardams Mettle. These players can not demand more hard content when they haven't even earned the clear on the content they have yet.

Finally, while the official stance of S.E. regarding third party tools says that it's not allowed, unofficially they really don't care as long as you don't harass people. Proof is that Yoshida watch streams of people using parsers and doesn't even seems to pay attention to it.

That's not endorsement. Going "Yoshi-P didn't immediately ban the world first clears who were using (whatever tool)" as endorsement of parsing is the same as going "well cops don't go after every speeder".

You don't go fishing to catch all the fish in the pond.

[Rogatum]

On mobile

May I ask why you seem to dislike parsing as much as you do? To dislike a tool seems odd to me since it seems you more so dislike players that abuse the tool, thus your disdain for such tools seems to be misplaced. I think we can all agree people that use any tool in a way it was not intended are scum, but why punish everyone for those that are not mature enough properly use something.

[Ceasaria]

"Cheat tools"

Do you include : Guide, stream, recording video, etc, too ?
In a way, it's a form of cheating by knowing the fight in advance and appropriating the work/effort of others, right ?
If not, then it would be very odd (from you).

[KisaiTenshi]

May I ask why you seem to dislike parsing as much as you do? To dislike a tool seems odd to me since it seems you more so dislike players that abuse the tool, thus your disdain for such tools seems to be misplaced. I think we can all agree people that use any tool in a way it was not intended are scum, but why punish everyone for those that are not mature enough properly use something.

Because it doesn't stop with "parsing". People who claim that they're only using them as DPS meters, simply aren't. They lack no understanding of the underlying data. They have no understanding of how such realtime DPS meters can't be 100% accurate, but abuse the fact that they got that tool that tells them information that other players don't have. If people were simply running a network parser in the background, and uploading things after-the-fact, there would be a lot less to complain about because players would not be subjected to being kicked by players who are parsing everything.

There's no consent within the present tools to ensure that players can not abuse it. A properly written tool would recognize a consent sequence (eg "spectacles yes") and a revoke sequence from the players and only show those realtime meters for those who opted-in, and would anonymize the log of those who didn't opt in. That solves the main sources of abuse and harassment that the current parsers enable. A parser plugin like cactbot should not exist, and neither should the triggers plugin, because these change the nature of the "parsing" from "DPS meter" to "just follow the instructions like a walkthrough".

Do you include : Guide, stream, recording video, etc, too ?
In a way, it's a form of cheating by knowing the fight in advance and appropriating the work/effort of others, right ?
If not, then it would be very odd (from you).

All of those are considered cheats, to various degrees. This for me goes all the way back to 1990 where spoiling games was something only young children did. How to solve a puzzle in a game everyone had was considered the bragging rights. Especially if the game was for adults. Modems, BBS's and hintbooks put an end to that. GameFAQ's finally put a nail in the idea of being able to solve a game yourself. Say hello to annoying QTE events in adventure games, and grindy RPG elements being put in games to extend their longevity from 4 hours to 30.

The along came youtube and well, now you don't even need to buy the game anymore.

The point is, I don't begrudge players for using these things if they are only ruining their own personal enjoyment. But as soon as your personal enjoyment of the game runs into ruining my and everyone else personal enjoyment of the game, we have a problem. In a multiplayer environment, the most common configuration is everyone having an unmodified game client, no guides, no walkthroughs, no hints, no parsers, no mods, no nothing. If you can not be content with the game in this state, then do not complain about ANYTHING in the game, because you have no right to. A player using these tools is playing the game on "ez mode" while people who aren't, are playing the game at the difficultly level it was designed for.

That's why when I see some players complaining about the difficulty of something and are shameless cheat tool users, like no, Yoshi-P is not going to build a dungeon that can't be beat on a PS4 with a controller, please stop asking for that, if you want a challenge, turn your tools off first and show us your real skill level.

[MoroMurasaki]

snip

"Back in my day we walked fifteen miles uphill to school both ways in blizzard hurricanes wearing nothing but prime rib through rabid wolf country."

That's cool. In 1990 I didn't exist yet. Many of the people who play this game now didn't exist yet. We aren't beholden to your archaic practices, don't try to enforce them on us. I know plenty of people who have been playing games since then as well, they've adapted and you can too.

This is the reality of today's MMO market, video game market and life. People use this wonderful internet to look up guides and make things simpler in an effort to constantly optimize their experience. If you can't accept that there is no point in anyone speaking to you because you're coming from a mindset that is so different from the rest of the people involved in conversations around raiding that it may as well be a different language.

Also I'm curious - isn't the hunt callout tool also cheating?

[Miste]

Because it doesn't stop with "parsing". People who claim that they're only using them as DPS meters, simply aren't. They lack no understanding of the underlying data. They have no understanding of how such realtime DPS meters can't be 100% accurate, but abuse the fact that they got that tool that tells them information that other players don't have. If people were simply running a network parser in the background, and uploading things after-the-fact, there would be a lot less to complain about because players would not be subjected to being kicked by players who are parsing everything.

So say someone meets this criteria...

-Uses dps meter
-Uses it solely and exclusively for just seeing their own performance level IE: their own numbers
-Does not use it to kick, abuse, or harass anyone
-Does not use any other features or w/e else it has

Explain to me what would be wrong to you about this scenario.

[Rockette]

So say someone meets this criteria...

-Uses dps meter
-Uses it solely and exclusively for just seeing their own performance level IE: their own numbers
-Does not use it to kick, abuse, or harass anyone
-Does not use any other features or w/e else it has

Explain to me what would be wrong to you about this scenario.

Exactly what I do, which I've asked this poster about twice now. It doesn't fit his/her "all people who use parsers also cheat using other things" manifesto so they're ignoring the question. According to this person, people who use parsers for a personal dps guide don't exist.

Therefore there's no use arguing. As I said, these sorts of people are like the flat-earthers of eorzea. You can logic all you want but they're gonna believe in what they've wasted so much time fighting for.

[AxlStream]

Kisai is a broken vinyl record at this point. Old and cracked... give it a rest.

[Rogatum]

mobile sorry

That is the thing you are still blaming a tool for the actions of a few people that use it to cause harm. While maybe not the best example, this line of thinking reminds me of people that wish to ban guns outright simply because some people do harm with them does not mean we should get rid of them all together. I do not think many feel parser offers 100% accurate depiction as to a players performance, but simply use it to give a general idea in the moment. Viewing the data outside of the fight can be used to accurately summarize how a player did though. You make it seem like parser abuse is rampant, and maybe that is the case for you. If you or someone you know is getting kicked maybe instead of blaming the tool some players use, they should use the tool to improve.

I think everyone is in agreement if someone uses any tool to abuse or harasses another player then action should be taken, but why should all people that use the tool be treated in the same way as the one that abused it?

[KisaiTenshi]

So say someone meets this criteria...

-Uses dps meter
-Uses it solely and exclusively for just seeing their own performance level IE: their own numbers
-Does not use it to kick, abuse, or harass anyone
-Does not use any other features or w/e else it has

Explain to me what would be wrong to you about this scenario.

If you're only ruining your own experience, then it's only the fact that it's against the Terms of Service, and exactly what Yoshi-P said, don't advertise the fact that you use it or that it exists at all.

There could be 1000 raiders using it this way, but the minute one of them they start talking about it being some kind of requirement is why these tools should not exist. Not every fight in the game is a DPS burn, and by giving the illusion that your DPS numbers matter like it was a competitive environment sucks the fun out of the game for others and players then shun the hard content because the raiders have given them the picture that the content is impossible and they will be kicked for even trying.

If you or someone you know is getting kicked maybe instead of blaming the tool some players use, they should use the tool to improve.

And this just proves what I said above. The tool should not exist. People using it should not assume others also use it, and the minute they do, they've crossed the line from "personal use" to destroying other players enjoyment of the game.

This is not a "guns kill people, people with guns kill people" semantics thing. The analogy is people being given loaded guns and people who don't recognize them as guns start shooting people and then don't want to be held responsible for the consequences.

I think everyone is in agreement if someone uses any tool to abuse or harasses another player then action should be taken, but why should all people that use the tool be treated in the same way as the one that abused it?

Because the people who develop the tool have no interest in preventing abuse. A tool is just a tool, and you just reduce adoption of if you try to prevent the bad actors from doing bad with it. The harassment isn't confined to the game either. Twitch, Discord, Twitter, Reddit and other forums that are below SE's radar are other means of harassment that SE won't do anything about.

History is rife with "It doesn't affect me, so I did nothing" stories about how small annoyances became large problems seemingly overnight because nobody spoke up when they saw a problem.

If someone released a "DPS meter" stand-alone from ACT, with no plugin capability and simply replicated the common popular parser overlay, do you think people would dump the ACT plugin? No. They won't because the ACT plugin lets them do things beyond it.

That is just human nature. People will not accept a replacement for something unless it does something "better" and a simple DPS meter is not "better" for these people.

So don't fool yourself into thinking people advocating for parsers would willingly give up any privilege once they've been accustomed to having it.

When it comes to things like FFlogs, I do wish they were opt-in instead of out, because due to my group not knowing that FFlogs were opt-out we caused some issues for a few members that were getting carried through content (for varies reasons) by uploading our logs to go over the data to improve our play. So I am all for having a system that is based around consent, but even so the current system is not inherently awful, sure some players treat the data as the end all be all and live and die by it. Still those players are few in the grand scheme of things. Though even if SE did release an official system that was opt-in most people would simply still use fllogs. While I do not agree that if fflogs switched over to an opt-in system it would ruin it due to the less overall data. That is for another topic.

I do have to say for someone that dislikes third party applications you sure bring them up a lot. :P

People won't give up a tool once they've discovered it, and instead will trade it for a better tool that offers more so they maintain their advantage over others. SE released the Duty Recorder. So far I've seen nobody use it, because it's not what the parser users want. The fact it doesn't persist past a maintenance also tells me that it's directly tied to replaying the combat data the server recorded, and hence the data is not compatible after a patch. SE needs to do better.

That Duty Recorder should be automatic for all synced duties, and the Opt-in/Opt-out should instead anonymize the players who haven't consented. eg Replace party members with the Scion NPC models. If you don't consent, then playing back your own fights will just not be available, and other players you play with will have your character replaced with a storyline NPC relevant to that content if played back. The server would have to do nothing more than replace your id number with the NPC id number.

All FFLogs would have to do to have a proper consent system would be to not display the names of players who haven't opted in. The actual parsing tools should be scrubbing player data that has no consent to it (eg replace the player ID numbers with random negative numbers to indicate they've been scrubbed.)

The person who runs the FFLogs site makes thousands of dollars from Patreon, and are also running ads. They're not a charity, it's a for-profit venture. They have no incentive to make it opt-in, because that just makes it less useful. Hence this is why you see a push in the EU to have EU citizens data strictly opt-in and the data brokers connected to advertising are having a fit. It's simply impossible to get consent and have meaningful data. They can scrub the identification info, but if the data broker isn't allowed to even log the activity in the first place, the entire dataset becomes useless.