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

[Bourne_Endeavor]

While I am in agreement with almost everything you've said in this thread... Two things:

1. How is WoW any more focused on raiding than XIV is? Both have about the same amount of side-content, the only real difference being that apart from "pet battles" (analogous to our TT more than our LotV), the side content still uses the same main gameplay systems. If anything, there tends to be more actually useful things one can do (e.g. to improve their character) outside of raiding in WoW than XIV... PvP also sees hugely more focus there, and yet I've never seen any WoW PvPer somehow consider Battlegrounds, PvP Raids, Brawls, or Arenas as part of "raiding".

Having never played WoW, I can only relay what I know off-handedly about it. From my understanding, it revolves more heavily around raiding and battle content as a whole compared to FFXIV, which tries to better emphasise a generalist focus through crafting, story and etc. For those reasons, you see people more competitive in WoW than FFXIV, which is why I suspect parsers would be far less an issue. Of course, do correct me if I'm wrong about WoW.

2. Why should parsers be uniquely saddled with a moderation check when the harassment is merely changing mediums, rather than being newly produced? That's like saying these newfangled Blu-Rays should be uniquely checked for pirating just because they're a distinct medium from DVDs... It's simply harassment. If whether the claims made are actually evidenced by fact or not matters, then it's not yet harassment, but merely criticism. Until people are going out of their way to harass someone, to demean their reputation, or are putting someone down without any reasonable potential to incite improvement, we're not yet at harassment. And once they are doing those things, the source is utterly irrelevant.

I mean, GMs would have to be on top of their game when it comes to reports. They... aren't exactly known for speedy responses, though my own dealings with them have been pleasant. It's not that parse abuse should be viewed any differently than general harassment, just that they need to be on top of both to prevent the abuse we hear so much about in WoW. That all said, I ultimately agree poor performance abuse would decrease substantially once it got over the initial grace period. Give it a month or so and there'd be more complaints about parse abuse than general abuse overall. The idea parsers suddenly turn decent people into pompous jerks is another boogeyman people keeping try to create.

Next: emnity management. Primary that's job of a tank. That means tank is expected to hold agro at all times and if he fails at that - that's his problem first and foremost. You understand? People expects tank to tank. And agro management skills for other jobs? Well, if we're talking about job unique actions like DRG elusive jump or NIN shadewalker and smoke screen then aye, if you have them - feel free to use them if situation requires. But if we're talking about role actions - they're optional. That means, if I don't want - i don't have to take it. Casual playstyle is not necessary about optimality and efficiency, but about fun above all else.

This also means I'm not required to save you because you elected not to take a skill, but decide instead, to thrust all the responsibility onto me because you were lazy. I am not going to spend an entire fight rotating tank stance because Mr. Samurai decided not to press Diversion. Not only is that forcing me to entirely change my playstyle, the raid actually loses damage even if said Samurai doesn't die. Role skills are not optional. If you want to meme around taking Crutch over Diversion, I'll meme back by using you as a cooldown.