Quote Originally Posted by Rogatum View Post
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".


Quote Originally Posted by Ceasaria View Post
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.