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

[Aquaslash]

OP, you wanna holler about discrimination, (which is totally gross to be using in the context of a video game btw), try being a SAM main like me, or a BLM main. You know, those jobs that get locked out of parties regardless of their skill just because the top players have found better times with other jobs. People on my server's Novice Network actively discourage people from playing samurai because of this meta nonsense, when it really only matters for the 1% of the 1%.

You're sitting here blathering about "waah I can't do 5K DPS" and not realizng WHY people are asking for that much. Do you want to keep hitting enrage over and over?

BTW, 5K is actually quite generous, seeing as SAM players were hitting that in Deltascape. I think even my grey parsing scrub ass has hit that at least once (before dying like the scrub that I am)

[Ultima]

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.

Instead of having to do all the work for SE by parsing their data and theorycrafting, which is unavoidable because we will always do that just to doublecheck the dev's work - but we can always reduce how much we have to do it with their help. It'd be nice if they'd throw us a bone and show us their openers/rotations, their stat priority, etc. I want people on the dev team who manage and main a job to write a guide on how to play it for the community and post it in-game like in a help guide or something. Could even be the Hall of the Intermediate idea, but you meet a "famous" member of your Job who will show you the ropes.

When 4.0 came out, nobody could believe some of the changes that were made like to WAR's defiance/deliverance where you'd LOSE half your gauge for swapping stances. Anyone who played WAR at a serious level was deeply hurt by this change and switched jobs or begrudgingly pushed through while voicing complaints the whole time. How can I believe this dev team has any idea what they're doing for game balance if they'd make such a grave error as a penalty for switching stances that completely ruins your rotation? The beast gauge has been a nightmare in general, but that was the big kicker.

[EorzeaHero69]

I fail to see how ACT would be killing the game in any way.

[SaitoHikari]

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.

Er, no. You still haven't provided any factual data that directly ties usage of a parser to clearing content, just feelings and stawmen.

I can clear O8S with or without my parser turned on. If I cleared it with a parser turned off and cleared it again with a parser turned on, what actual difference would a parser provide in the latter that actually constitutes cheating?

I've been openly admitting that I've been parsing on these forums for at least a year now (which is probably around the time the forum staff lightened up on the topic, likely because higher-ups noticed the massive brain drain leaving the forums as a result of the hardline policy before). Nothing has happened to me, as much as you probably want me burned at the stake for it. The fact of the matter is, don't be an asshole and you won't really have anything to fear.

The previous MMO I played actually did implement an official parser. Nobody took it seriously there because the game had been already been broken by a slew of other bad decisions beforehand that basically rendered it meaningless (it only really served as a metric to show off the effect your gear had on your damage output at that point, the game had already transformed into your typical P2W Korean MMO). Parsers by themselves do not affect a community nearly as much as you think it does.

Instead of having to do all the work for SE by parsing their data and theorycrafting, which is unavoidable because we will always do that just to doublecheck the dev's work - but we can always reduce how much we have to do it with their help. It'd be nice if they'd throw us a bone and show us their openers/rotations, their stat priority, etc. I want people on the dev team who manage and main a job to write a guide on how to play it for the community and post it in-game like in a help guide or something. Could even be the Hall of the Intermediate idea, but you meet a "famous" member of your Job who will show you the ropes.

When 4.0 came out, nobody could believe some of the changes that were made like to WAR's defiance/deliverance where you'd LOSE half your gauge for swapping stances. Anyone who played WAR at a serious level was deeply hurt by this change and switched jobs or begrudgingly pushed through while voicing complaints the whole time. How can I believe this dev team has any idea what they're doing for game balance if they'd make such a grave error as a penalty for switching stances that completely ruins your rotation? The beast gauge has been a nightmare in general, but that was the big kicker.

That's the other thing. We've come to doubt that the developers are even aware of the systems that they themselves have designed. Do recall that the developers openly admitted that they were nerfing a few Ninja skills at the start of Stormblood, because the playerbase found a better rotation than what the developers originally intended. Intentionally hiding data like exact critical hit/direct hit rates and effect determination has on damage/healing from the player does not instill confidence.

[MaloraYuki]

I fail to see how ACT would be killing the game in any way.

You fail to see how it’s killing the game because it isn’t. Just a few people who are bad at the game screaming because they are bad at the game. Nothing more nothing less.

[Nixxe]

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.

Most other games aren't played competitively in a social environment and therefore have lower thresholds for success and are graded entirely as pass/fail. The issue isn't really that MMOs are particularly bad at explaining how to play per se, but rather that any decent amount of complexity, once turned loose into the wilds of live where the community roams, will be subject to the inventiveness of said community. Game devs, despite their best efforts, will often fail to predict exactly how the community runs with a particular design, and even in non-MMORPGs that focus heavily or exclusively on group play, such as MOBAs, the community will establish a meta that often runs counter to the directions the game tries to herd players in. In such cases, only the community can ever really be responsible for creating and maintaining the resources necessary to adhere to the meta they've created. It's simply unreasonable to expect a handful of devs to perpetually outwit what is essentially crowd-sourced ingenuity.

[DaulBan]

This thread may very well be the most fun and engaging FFXIV-related content to come out in months.

[MrKusakabe]

I am being a department manager or head of department (or whatever you wanna call it), and I have basically spreadsheetss, limits, ratings, rankings every day at work. Basically a real-life parser about my and my collegues performance. And I have to think about them evey single day.

I wold never ever use these in a video game. It's my leisure time. If I get the stuff done, everyone else should shut up. Period. I've been flamed for like 30 seconds longer dungeon runs.

Often I feel unemployed over over eagerly addicted speedrun people use these to cause flames and madness and show their pro-ness.
Just like you guys like your rankings and whatnot, I do not. This is not my job.

We get the stuff done, I do not shake my balls while you pull your weight, just to get that straight. I am not one of these "freestyle" guys that make you lose because of DPS checks or something. I know how to adapt - to an extend, enough to not being dead weight.
But I also do not want to have fights over a bit less damage just because you got nothing else to do in your real life that fills you out so you gotta call on people for not doing this or that in a video game.
Then you come up with "diss iss multiplayeur game" and want to kick people, but indeed, it is not just about you (parser users). The argument can go both directions.

[alimdia]

Often I feel unemployed over over eagerly addicted speedrun people use these to cause flames and madness and show their pro-ness.
Just like you guys like your rankings and whatnot, I do not. This is not my job.

Lol, so only unemployed addicted people are capable of pressing 1 2 3 in the correct order or using aoes during big packs.

[MrKusakabe]

Lol, so only unemployed addicted people are capable of pressing 1 2 3 in the correct order or using aoes during big packs.

No, only unemployed people need to get angry over such things. Like they have nothing to really care or fear about in their real life. First World problems.

Please do not read things that are not there.