Letter to MR Yoshi: Why parses system is destroying the ffxiv world.

[Sigma-Astra]

For real plus some of the most insulting things have come from the OP not the people defending parser use. Calling people greedy telling them how they damage the community. I’m going to throw out there if no one on this forum has got banned for parser use it’s because no one has harassed anyone with one. That means if they run one it’s for personal use which the devs have said they wouldn’t care about as long as it wasn’t talked about in game or used to harass people. Funny how that works, guess the OP wasn’t smart enough to figure that one out.

It would be pretty hard to start banning users for parsing, especially those on PS4 because we can't really run a third party program ourselves and instead would need to rely on someone else from the PC spectrum. And if they did try to start banning users for running a parser? Imagine the flack SE would get that they can only incriminate PC users and not PS4 simply because we can't do it ourselves and lots of time, parsers are run without our knowledge by other users.

It's absurd to think SE could do anything at all and that they would waste company time and resources to try and strictly enforce a no third party tool rule which would be not only be a complete waste of time on their end, but more than likely not even yield a perfect 100% solution. And, it would only serve to completely alienate and piss off the raiding communities in all three regions, Japan included.

And we all know how SE doesn't like pissing off Japan. Sometimes, they're more harsher than we are.

[MaloraYuki]

It would be pretty hard to start banning users for parsing, especially those on PS4 because we can't really run a third party program ourselves and instead would need to rely on someone else from the PC spectrum. And if they did try to start banning users for running a parser? Imagine the flack SE would get that they can only incriminate PC users and not PS4 simply because we can't do it ourselves and lots of time, parsers are run without our knowledge by other users.

It's absurd to think SE could do anything at all and that they would waste company time and resources to try and strictly enforce a no third party tool rule which would be not only be a complete waste of time on their end, but more than likely not even yield a perfect 100% solution. And, it would only serve to completely alienate and piss off the raiding communities in all three regions, Japan included.

And we all know how SE doesn't like pissing off Japan. Sometimes, they're more harsher than we are.

True I meant because they said if you harass with it in game like telling people their numbers calling them sh*t for it or anything of that sort. So harassment with the use of a parser is bannable. Running parsers without someone knowing in game isn’t. The only reason they could ban for the harassment with a parser is you said it in game they have the logs.

But that would also require someone to report which people would rather cry on the forums than put an actual report in.

[SmokeyTheSequel]

If I used a parse I would use it to benefit myself and learn from my mistakes and get better. I was against these things for years but since this game is so freaking DPS intense it's hard not want to use one. Perhaps if tanks started tanking again and healers healed and not everyone just stance danced all day then I might revert my opinion.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

So why do you classify them as bad? Because if the logs! Ergo, logs are the issue! No logs, no salt,everybody happy! Still I don’t see DPS in average to deal over 5k... 5k it’s the AVERAGE.

Someone said 4K for tank, that’s insanity lol not even WAR can, 1 tank that can over other 1000 is not average

Admittedly, FFlogs is the only thing keeping Savage routinely active. Without it, very few raiders would bother playing because there's simply no point. What use is the gear if you aren't actually seeing visible self-improvement? Of course, this has changed with the addition of Ultimate, but FFlogs more or less carries interest even for people with no aspirations whatsoever to speed kill things. It's why people like chasing HoH scoreboards. They want a goal, even if it's a self-made one.

I'll go out on a limb here and say if FFlogs disappeared tomorrow, a good number of raiders would unsub until 5.0. Since there's no Ultimate, who really cares about Savage if you can't see improvement? Granted, I suspect many players, in general, will do precisely the same since, well, I don't have much faith in lasting content for 4.5.

[Hyperia]

Perhaps if tanks started tanking again and healers healed and not everyone just stance danced all day then I might revert my opinion.

The whole game industry has been moving away from the trinity so I do not expect to see this in the future but rather an acceleration of its removal. I can see a day where there are no healers and tanks, just DPS. All you have to do is look at PoTD and HoH, they can be done without a regular group. While they are fun content, they are also experiments to see how far they can go in game design.

[Wegente]

I haven't read the whole thread, so probably someone has mentioned this already, but: parsers are what makes raiding possible in this game.
Without them, the clear rates of any savage raid would be way lower than they are now.

The reason is simple: without a parser you wouldn't be able to recognize the weak links in a group, the people that are making mistakes in their rotation. Not even the players themselves would know, because they would have no way to tell if they are pressing their buttons in the right order or not.
And so you would have countless groups wiping for months on the same boss, maybe because of that one DPS who is clueless about how his class works and can't improve even if he wanted to. But the group will never know that and will probably give up at some point, hopeless and frustrated, quitting the raid or even the game.

Sure, there are people that use parsers and logs to mock other players, but those are a necessary evil in order for raiding to stay alive in this game. And you can report those players anyway, so you should feel free to do so.

[KisaiTenshi]

Oh, come off it already. Automated play? You still have to be able to react to the information given to you.

As I said, the amount of people who actually know how the parsers work, can be counted on one hand, and maybe two people on this forum have the technical knowhow to write one.

Suffice it to say, the "Parser" is not a log parser, the ACT plugins are network packet decoders and they read 6 specific packets, three animation packets, the movement packet which is every 500ms and the hp/mp/tp and status effect updates every 3000ms. That's how it works. It does not know how pets work, it does not know when to drop status effects off, because the game doesn't update the status unless a status effect changes (added or removed by despawn.) SMN/ACN is basically impossible to "parse" correctly and is the least accurate. It also doesn't parse buffs and debuffs correctly because it ignores timing changes, so that has consequences for SCH and AST as well. It might not even track pets correctly at all if they're despawned because the id numbers change when they're respawned.

But, hey, if you want to keep pretending that the DPS meter is somehow meaningful.

Even so, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that will actually argue that this isn't actual cheating. Parsing at the end of the day is still just reading numbers, it doesn't give any outside assistance on how to actually solve mechanics like the above.

Using any tools to complete content without even trying it, you may as well unsub and go watch people play the game on twitch. It's the same experience. It may not be a popular fact, but using any tool to reveal information that is not provided by the game, to your advantage, is cheating. That is what using the DPS meter is, that is what using callouts is, that is what using guides or other datamined data is. You can spoil your own experience if you're really a bad player, I don't care, but when you spoil other players experiences by requiring them to cheat as well so you get your fflogs e-peen satisification, that's just destroying the game for your own benefit.

If the raiders can't see the cause and effect of their damage to the game, then the "raiders" are going to continue to fall outside the difficulty curve, and Yoshi-P will keep making the content easier because the other 95% of the casual player base will be in the center of the difficulty curve, and hence why everything appears to be braindead easy. Stop using these tools as a crutch and play the content normally, and maybe the difficulty curve will tilt back towards providing some challenge.

This is the lifecycle of a MMORPG, it's all good until someone creates a tool to give players an advantage, and then all the bad players adopt it and use it as a bludgeon against other players.

[LadyKairi]

Apparently you didn’t read all answers or the main reason of my post! People insult and gave opinion not required... my post is a suggestion for the developers, I don’t care of any opinions except theirs!!

Why do you classify yourself elitist player? Who gave you this title? Oooh probably you have orange logs so you think you are. But your being a elitistic player doesn’t depends AT ALL by your logs, logs don’t count. You maybe be or not I don’t know but if you are that is for many other things, except logs!

Please before judging read the original post and all the replies thanks

You obviously need to work on your reading comprehension skills. I already said that I have read through this whole thread, and that is including your OP. If you don’t care about the opinions about what others here have to say, then why did you post it here on the forums rather than actually send them a letter? Better yet, why are you even replying to us if you “don’t care”? It sure seems like you care, considering how hard you are trying to justify yourself. Also, you started throwing insults first. I’m gonna let you in on some advice my mother gave me while growing up.... “Treat others as you want to be treated”. And for your information, people not agreeing with you is not an insult.

I gave myself that title. According to the people against parsers and casuals, people like me are always called elitist, so I have come to embrace it. And logs DO count, especially when you have yours updated all the time, so they are an accurate representation of your performance. I’m not orange, and do not strive to be these days. I do not want to pad my damage by getting tons of buffs or put the healing burden solely on my cohealer.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It may not be a popular fact, but using any tool to reveal information that is not provided by the game, to your advantage, is cheating.

By this backwards logic, all guides and information shared via reddit/discord is cheating. If I have a Prima strategy guide for FFX, I have cheated. Your bias definition of cheating is not absolute.

Nothing "appears" to be braindead easy, it is. No one runs a parse or call outs for Normal mode raids. They blitz through them lightning fast because the content is trivial. You may find Phantom Train difficulty, but you also stand around taking an eternity to cast even a single heal. If the devs could delete parsers and logs tomorrow, the difficulty of 4.4 isn't going to magically increase. Dungeon bosses aren't going to magically hit for 40k+ when they scarcely broke 20k earlier. You keep insisting parsers are to blame for everything despite it making literally no sense. The difficulty of Stormblood has been brought down considerably so people can be more easily carried through content, thus they stop complaining "it's too hard!!!!!"

If parsers were to blame for that, why did nothing in ARR hurt nearly to the extent of Gordias and Midas? None of them existed yet the hardest tiers only came when casual players saw raiders clear Coil in less than a week and assume "well, they must be super easy then!"

We do play the content normally. Unfortunately, at every level below Savage, it's a complete joke. Come 4.4, I will wall-to-wall pull The Burn in i370 gear day one, and likely take minimal damage. Just like virtually every other dungeon released in Stormblood at 70. I suppose that's the dreaded parsers fault.

[AxlStream]

This is why this community is seen as a universal joke skillwise even though we may arguably have the hardest content of any MMO in Ultimate. We argue about parsers. An issue that is a non-issue in ANY other MMORPG.