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

[Wegente]

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!"

This is exactly the point. Gordias and Midas were able to be developed exactly BECAUSE of the parsers, if anything.
The raider community, especially the hardcore ones, grew up in skill thanks to parsers letting them improve their rotations and damage outputs.

If you go and take a look at the world first video for T5, healers were barely doing any damage there and the DPS rotations and cooldown usages were mediocre at best.
However, thanks to them being able to parse themselves they managed to find new, more optimal rotations and increase their efficiency in raids, thus leading to Lucrezia and other guilds being able to clear Final Coil in a very short time span compared to the previous Coils.
They breezed through the DPS and healing checks thanks to their new improved rotations. Without a damage meter allowing them to see whether what they were doing was optimal or not, this would never have been possible.

And then Square Enix released Gordias and Midas, thinking the playerbase had improved and was ready for harder raids.
That wasn't true however, because only a very small minority used damage meters in 2.0 and improved their gameplay, while the vast majority of people were still pressing their buttons cluelessly, thinking they were doing well when in fact they weren't.

[Magic-Mal]

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.

No we are a joke because we argue for 29 pages about being good and parsing while the Japanese actually clear stuff.

[KaivaC]

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.

Mayhaps you should consider that it's actually quite difficult for ACT to actually read some data due to how the server send the information? I don't claim to understand parsers - I don't need to. That's what experts are there for. Funny how two of the folks on the forums who do know how to actually understand this program have both told you that you were wrong in various methods, yet you prattle on as if you are actually right about something.

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

This, coming from someone either incapable of raiding, or unwilling. How about you actually practice what you preach and do so-called raiding without these tools, see how well you do. I hear a whole lot of talking, but absolutely nothing to show for it.

[Vstarstruck]

Sry if someone doesn't like my way to type... I do my best .

To reply to MS HYO: many ppl offended me! mine was a post to suggest a change in the community but most of you are full of hathred !

to reply to the BIS concept I will rephrase it: Different people got different goals in game, for me the BIS is not one and you ppl are nobody to judge other priorites! My goal is to gear up to the maximum level as more classes as I can BIS or not.... I do raid with my healers because I love healing and I am good at it, if I get a piece I am really happy and I don't care if is BIS or not I am happy to use it and I can heal in savage content with or without. BIS I saw for SCH gives you 2500 crit, 142ish piety and 124ish DET and I PERSONALLY DONT LIKE IT! I don't need so much Piety and I prefer to have more DET. You can have the full BIS and not be good or not have it and do great is the player that matter.

The concept of Logs and BIS bother me and it took from me all the fun from playing DPS, What you top dps do? just blindly follow SOMEONE ELSE ROTATION and do pew pew pew! wow what an achievement do like puppets what other told you to do.
FYI elitist player don't need someone to tell you how to play but the create and optimize their own rotation with their skills.

Still guy you are outside of topic, the point still is why discriminate ppl if they dont have purple/orange logs on PF? if the damage is SUFFICIENT everybody can play, develop new classes without you judging them!!! if you hit the grey line you dont damage anyone is a matter of fact but toxic ppl do for entires parties!!



Anyway even if many of you don’t agree with me some other ppl do !! if you see online on any forum about ffxiv there are many ppl defining parses and LOGs as CANCERS so I am not alone guys!!

Anyway I asked a question few times but nobody got attributes enough to reply to that: If you have orange logs do you think to be a better player than ppl who don’t? if the answer is yes means you are DISCRIMINATING!
Nobody will reply because you know that by replying: Yes I am better! you would give me automatically right.
Still I think logs can classify DPSs by their results but not healers or tanks lol

And if I said someone got the brain of a cow, I didn’t do names and I won’t so why you feel offended if you are not a cow ?!

What do you mean by "orange logs"? Going back to what I said earlier, if I kick that healer that stands there and does nothing because fairy can do most of the healing, or DPS does not use aoe abilities making the run go much longer then it should be, is that discrimination? For me I define it as disruptive on their part. I do not need a parser to know they are doing very low DPS.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This is exactly the point. Gordias and Midas were able to be developed exactly BECAUSE of the parsers, if anything.
The raider community, especially the hardcore ones, grew up in skill thanks to parsers letting them improve their rotations and damage outputs.

If you go and take a look at the world first video for T5, healers were barely doing any damage there and the DPS rotations and cooldown usages were mediocre at best.
However, thanks to them being able to parse themselves they managed to find new, more optimal rotations and increase their efficiency in raids, thus leading to Lucrezia and other guilds being able to clear Final Coil in a very short time span compared to the previous Coils.
They breezed through the DPS and healing checks thanks to their new improved rotations. Without a damage meter allowing them to see whether what they were doing was optimal or not, this would never have been possible.

And then Square Enix released Gordias and Midas, thinking the playerbase had improved and was ready for harder raids.
That wasn't true however, because only a very small minority used damage meters in 2.0 and improved their gameplay, while the vast majority of people were still pressing their buttons cluelessly, thinking they were doing well when in fact they weren't.

Except parsers didn't exist throughout most of ARR. And the devs weren't even aware of them until it became more ubiquitous in use. There is not a chance in hell they based Gordias and Midas' difficulty on parse usage nor the assumption players improved that drastically. If they did... it denotes a degree of sheer incompetency that beggars belief, especially when you consider Yoshida has prattled on for years about wanting to improve player skill. Going by this logic, here is demonstrable proof parsers accomplish that very objective yet instead of developing one like every other MMO, they threaten to ban players for mentioning their use and come up with pointless job gauges as their solution. Genius...

If your game can only be considered challenging if your playerbase is kept entirely in the dark regardless rotation use... your design philosophy fundamentally flawed. Perhaps that's why this game does a laughably piss poor job explaining how rotations even work beyond 1-2-3.

No we are a joke because we argue for 29 pages about being good and parsing while the Japanese actually clear stuff.

Perhaps if NA/EU didn't whine so much about everything is too difficult, we wouldn't be arguing. After all, JP didn't complain about Shinryu normal yet holy hell did NA cry.

[Wegente]

snip

Parser did exist since almost day 1 in ARR.
I remember people using an add-on called FFXIVapp that basically did what ACT does, just in a less accurate way. And my static group was using ACT already as early as Second Coil.
It was thanks to comparing my performances with parses of hardcore raiders back in ARR, Lucrezia and other guilds like Collision, that I improved my skills as a player. Without having access to such things, there is no way I would have improved through the years.

[Shurrikhan]

Parser did exist since almost day 1 in ARR.
I remember people using an add-on called FFXIVapp that basically did what ACT does, just in a less accurate way. And my static group was using ACT already as early as Second Coil.
It was thanks to comparing my performances with parses of hardcore raiders back in ARR, Lucrezia and other guilds like Collision, that I improved my skills as a player. Without having access to such things, there is no way I would have improved through the years.

While I'll agree with Bourne that Gordius difficulty had nothing directly to do with parsers, but simply with how quickly Lucrezia and the like burned through Final Coil (though aided previously by parsers to figure out how to really milk their rotations and macrorotations, sure), I too saw parsers used as early as the first week of first coil. People would bounce between ACT and FFXIVapp based on which was quicker to fix itself after each patch or hotfix, and which seemed more accurate for their class. FFXIVapp seemed to judge melee a bit higher, iirc, for some reason, and both had very little accuracy as to DoT or pet damage at first.

Just after my Twintania clear I was already pushing for ubiquitous access to official parsers because of how much improvement I'd seen from people who both spend the time practicing and have the information systems to really make use of that time. My stance on that has never, and will never, change, though I've since amended my hopes towards that of a rDPS parser instead.

If fflogs was sorted only in terms of rDPS and clear speeds, I think you'd actually see a fair bit more compositional access made available due to a fairer representation of the current balance of jobs and compositions. The meta composition really is as strong as it's made out to be, but at least people wouldn't feel like they're being judged as inferior for allowing some of their would-be personal damage (e.g. a Dragoon buffed by Bard, Machinist, Ninja, Scholar, and Astrologian) to be taken up by a more directly contributing job like Samurai or Black Mage. The only real worry at that point would be the value of DRG in compositions without dual Ranged, which is already a can of worms that has been left partly open far too long.

[RiyahArp]

Without having access to such things, there is no way I would have improved through the years.

This is a game design fault that's actually endemic to MMOs.

Any other game we play, we get feedback on how well we do by playing the game directly, and the abilities and UI aren't counterintuitive. Usually it's a bad rpg if things like stats are hidden or are opaque to how things work, or you don't get accurate info on how well you do while playing.

The thing about MMOs is that they are incredibly bad at this on purpose because they want theorycrafters to discover things, and want things like fan sites or wikis to sprout up because it makes for a lot more sticky community. like this forum, or reddit, people get more into the game if we create our own things. But the flip side is that MMOs are some of the worst offenders in hiding needed data for the player, to the point where people parse or datamine or stuff to compensate.

I mean...you can get rid of parsers completely but you have to design for openess, not hiddenness.

[Shurrikhan]

This is a game design fault that's actually endemic to MMOs.

For once we can agree. The majority of MMOs have given little to support learning directly or through the content provided.

But I'd have to say that XIV's situation is worse than most, even: transparency (of stats, of oddly named effects, zero explanation of global mechanics, or even tooltips left wrong for 3 major patches) should not be illegal. And yet parsers are considered as such, and any and almost every attempt between ARR and late HW on this forum to clear away the ambiguity of stat effects or to explain the ways actual damage formulas work in this game have seen the poster permanently banned from the OF. Even putting aside the 'don't ask; don't tell' policy of parsers, this game has taken a crack-down approach on many a scientific understanding of the game's mechanics, all because they deliberately avoid transparency where most other MMOs embrace it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This is a game design fault that's actually endemic to MMOs.

You and I very seldom agree on anything. For once... that isn't the case.

A good, yet, simple example of lacking information are secondary stats. How much does Critical Hit benefit you over Determination? How much does Determination contribute to healing? The devs have handwaved this as something they don't want to elaborate on because "some people enjoy figuring it out!" This is among the reasons parsers have become so prevalent. Generally speaking, people are not a fan of being kept in the dark. If they're going to meld materia, they want to have an idea towards the impact it will have not guess.

On the subject of triggers, one of the top tier raiders commented on his dislike of the Gaol one yet mentioned how poorly designed that mechanic was. Their reasoning? "If SE wants people to rely less on triggers, give them a chance to react for longer than a split second."

While I know you despise parsers, I still think they would significantly help improve the playerbase, thus allowing for more developed content than what we've seen at the casual level. Of course, only if SE swiftly bans those who abuse other players with that information.