Quote Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi View Post
The problem is the number of people who actually know how those tools work can be counted on one hand, and they're not accurate or reliable tools, but people want to believe they are so they can bludgeon other users with them. Everyone who doesn't like the site should explicitly optout of the site, and if people won't party with you for hiding parses, report them.

Players who use these tools on any active content, are cheaters. Just look what happened with UwU.

There is no accountability to be had. Bad players will use tools because they think they're in a e-peen competition. Good players don't use tools at all, or at least not tools that give them any advantage in playing content or automation. The friction comes from bad players who parse and think they're in a e-peen competition on content that doesn't even matter, harassing PUG's and PF's groups, instead of forming their own private e-peen party.

Parser users are wrecking the game, no doubt. And when parser users complain about the content being too easy... that is why.
How are you going to report people for refusing to party with you because your parses are hidden when they can simply refuse to tell you why or make up a reason? The game rules do not afford you an expectation of an invite.

You also clearly have no idea what you're talking about and have likely never played an MMO even remotely seriously. I don't raid in this game, but I raided for years in WoW at a reasonably high level (US top 100), and let me assure you that theorycrafting and performance metrics are the lifeblood of upper end players. Their superior understanding of the game and of performance metrics is why they're they're the upper end to begin with. Playing the game in that fashion of course does not mean they don't have fun. It certainly found it fun when I did it. It's a different type of fun from what I do in FFXIV now where I mostly just putz around crafting and doing the story, but you'd have to be pretty foolish to genuinely believe people are paying money every month to not have fun.

You are right that along with performance metrics comes not-so-great hierarchy obsessed wannabes, but to declare parsing terrible because those players exist is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Those players also exist even without objective performance metrics. People are capable of qualitatively assessing gameplay. Whether they are any good at it or not doesn't have any intrinsic connection to how confident they feel about aggressively berating others for failing to meet whatever arbitrary or not-so-arbitrary standards they may have set.